The End of the World as We Know It: Scenes from a Life

"[An] unnerving, elegantly crafted memoir. . . . Morbidly funny."—Entertainment Weekly ( Entertainment Weekly )"A gifted writer['s]...memorable account of his terribly flawed family. ...Searing...It stays with you."—USA Today ( USA Today )"A devastating debut memoir about a Southern childhood. A simple summary of the storyline of this memoir might inspire an eye-roll: Do we really need another tale about someone growing up in a South of days-gone-by, surrounded by eccentric relatives and neighbors, with a little alcoholism and incest thrown in for good measure? But Goolrick takes that tired scenario and makes it magical. He recounts a Virginia childhood worthy of William Styron and Flannery O'Connor. The deformed weirdos, a staple of Southern grotesque, are here, including severely retarded aunt Dodo, who one day asked young Robert to kiss her passionately.xa0 Here, too, are cocktail parties that would have inspired Douglas Sirk: Goolrick describes the lavish fetes his parents threw, the lovely chiffon dresses his mother wore.xa0 But something was off-kilter, at even the grandest parties.xa0 The chiffon dresses always wound up with cigarette burns, and the hectic entertaining was artifice and pretense, a frantic effort to cover up alcoholism and other, more hideous, family secrets.xa0 The author interweaves scenes from his childhood with scenes from his adult life: his mother's attempt to get dry, his own breakdown and drinking problem, his mother's death. One of the most gripping and emotionally insightful passages is of his father's funeral, where Goolrick makes clear how hard it is to bury a man you haven't forgiven. The language is lush and poetic while never becoming purple. Goolrick is clearly a victim of his parents' brutal abuse, but he has broken out of the categories of 'victim' and 'survivor' to become a powerful truth-teller."— Kirkus Reviews , starred review ( Kirkus Reviews )"In this brutally painful remembrance of hard drinking, attempted suicide, and childhood trauma, first-time author Goolrick constructs a well-written, nonlinear narrative of his life...Goolrick's memory of the details of his childhood is impressive, as is the deep sense of sorrow...the story evokes. A courageous and successful work."— People ( People Magazine )"Goolrick adeptly uses a slow, teasing way of revealing himself to the reader...Anecdotes of captivating vitality.... The End of the World As We Know It is barbed and canny, with a sharp eye for the infliction of pain."— The New York Times ( The New York Times )"A moving, unflinchingly rendered story of how the past can haunt a life."— Publishers Weekly ( Publishers Weekly ) In the tradition of Mary Karr's The Liars' Club and Rick Bragg's All Over but the Shoutin' , Robert Goolrick has crafted a classic memoir of childhood and the secrets hidden in a heart that can't forget. In the Goolrick home there was a law: Never talk about the family in the outside world, never reveal the slightest crack in the facade. In The End of the World as We Know It , the author takes us back to the seemingly idyllic world his father and mother created in their home in a small Southern college town, a world of gentle men and lovely ladies and cocktails and party dresses—a world being eroded by a family history of alcoholism. As Goolrick grew to be a man, his childhood held memories that would not let go, memories that held a secret that followed him wherever he went, defining and directing his days. Over time, the secret grew so big it threatened to rip the world apart. And then it did. With devastating honesty and razor-sharp wit, he looks back with love, and with anger, at the parents who both created his world and destroyed it. As Lee Smith (author of On Agate Hill ) observed, "Alcohol may be the real villain in this pain-permeated, exquisitely written memoir of a Virginia childhood—but it is also filled with absolutely dead-on social commentary of this very particular time and place. A brave, haunting, riveting book." Robert Goolrick is the author of two books: The End of the World as We Know It, a memoir, and his first novel, A Reliable Wife . He lives in Virginia. Read more