The Ticking Is the Bomb
A Memoir

Delve in to any book of the Nick Flynn canon and you’ll find a couple of threads that run throughout: 1) That his mother committed suicide; and 2) That he met his unstable father—who left when he was six months old—while working at a homeless shelter in Boston. Depending on what (poetry or memoir) b......more

Nick Flynn’s The Ticking is the Bomb tells the story of his life prior to his daughter’s existence, a time when he is lost in the sense that he doesn’t know what he is doing rather than where he is. The book is set in a variety of places (to which Flynn travels) over a large time span, which ranges......more

I obviously did not want to read this book. It first arrived in the mail, as an advance review copy, a several months ago, and I consigned it casually to the pile of books that I might read some day. But I didn't read it. There was something about it, obviously, that I did not like. Perhaps it was t......more

As I've said before, I'm a sucker for a good memoir. As it turns out, I'm a sucker for any memoir - even if it's not really that good. I'm not sure what it is that separates my appreciation of memoir from that of biography or autobiography, but I think it's this: whereas a biography or autobiography......more

Unfortunately, my initial thoughts remained true throughout the rest of the book. I'm sorry, Nick Flynn, that your last book was so fucking good that anything else you write will (most likely) pale in comparison. **** I'm still more or less reserving judgment, but as I'm now just over halfway through......more