David Sheff, Beautiful Boy

David Sheff, Beautiful Boy. A memoir of living with a son's drug addiction, so a fairly terrifying book for a parent to read. Matt brought this home because they're promoting it at Starbucks and he wanted to know if it's "well-written" for his customers. Fairly. Not incredibly gripping, a little repetitive. But still, I had to keep reading, hoping for a neat resolution and a happy ending for Nic. By the nature of the story, you care for the characters despite Nic's flaws (the subject of the book, after all) and David's extraordinary navel gazing. Although you have to excuse some of the constant self-blame, because mostly David's role consisted of worrying. The second half of the book was tighter than the first. David suffered a brain hemorrhage some way through the writing process,and I wonder if that paradoxically cleaned up the narrative. I read that Nic Sheff wrote a memoir published at the same time, and I'm curious to read it. Not curious enough to buy it, but if I run across it I'll read it.