Scott McClanahan

Alternately hilarious and sad, this heartfelt, somewhat fictionalized autobiography of growing up in West Virginia is short and well worth reading (or listening to the audiobook--after a while, you'll think you're hearing the author himself.) In our lives, we have probably all encountered a few people like those in this book, but to encounter them all in one lifetime seems like too much. Luckily, McClanahan has writing for an outlet. This book is a very hard to define hybrid of West Virginia history, including several notable disasters and other stories, and family history. What is lacking in the end, is a sense of the author himself. His role in the stories is generally that of an onlooker, and we end up with no idea of how he ended up as a teacher and writer. Still, this is an unusual experience and well worth diving into.… (more)

It was OK. I read it in part because I'm waiting for McClanahan's newest book, The Sarah Book, to become available at my library (I'm on the hold list for it), and I was curious enough about his writing to read this one, since it was immediately available. I appreciate the unorthodox style and tone of the book, in part because some of what I write does not necessarily fit any mold. My interest in the story and the people McClanahan grew as I read, but I didn't feel particularly moved by most of it. Oddly, I found the Appendix, where McClanahan sets the record straight about what liberties he took with facts in the rest of book, to be the most intriguing chapter of the book. I will still read The Sarah Book when my turn comes, though. Maybe I'll get more out of his fiction than I did out of this.… (more)

A compulsively readable train-wreck life story. A book of laughter and pain. The up-front, hard-hitting prose of a writer disregarding the tropes and guidelines they teach you in English 101, reinventing rhythmic emotions on the page in the language of his tormented psyche.

The no-good narrator, down-on-his luck, utterly divorceable, may not arouse much sympathy in many of us. A self-saboteur extraordinaire, McClanahan, the main character of his own novel, comes to frequent forks in the road. Typically, he chooses the rocky, hellishly nihilistic path. The Beatrice of this journey, Sarah, equally flawed but not quite as destructive as the author's fictive offspring, acts as a point of reference whereby we can gauge the m.c.'s madness and desperation.

There's very little description, much comedy and plenty of witty interlocution. This all makes for a gallivanting pace and a story that sticks in the memory like a wacky dream. While it lacks in technical brilliance, the story is what matters. You won't be able to look away.… (more)