Being Flynn, Nick Flynn
Being Flynn, Nick Flynn
List: $16.95 | Sale: $11.87
Club: $8.47

Being Flynn
A Memoir; Originally Published as Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

Author: Nick Flynn

Narrator: Scott Brick

Unabridged: 6 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook (DRM Protected)

Published: 02/02/2012

Synopsis

“Sometimes I’d see my father, walking past my building on his way to another nowhere. I could have given him a key, offered a piece of my floor. But if I let him inside the line between us would blur, my own slow-motion car wreck would speed up.”With a raw authenticity stripped of self-pity and a powerful narrative voice unlike any other, Being Flynn illuminates the hidden story of fathers and sons in America. Nick Flynn has written a remarkable testament to the enduring strength of one boy’s struggle for survival.Nick met his father when he was working as a caseworker in a homeless shelter in Boston. As a teenager, he’d received letters from this stranger, a self-proclaimed poet and con man doing time in federal prison for bank robbery. Being Flynn tells the story of the trajectory that led Nick and his father onto the streets, into that shelter, and finally, to each other.

About Nick Flynn

Nick Flynn is an award-winning poet and author most recently of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Award.

About Scott Brick

Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. He attended UCLA and spent ten years in a traveling Shakespeare company. Passionate about the spoken word, he has narrated a wide variety of audiobooks. winning won more than fifty AudioFile Earphones Awards and several of the prestigious Audie Awards. He was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine and the Voice of Choice for 2016 by Booklist magazine.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Oriana on January 19, 2020

Oh god this book is so incredibly good. One of the endorsements on the back says something like, Finally someone whose life is worthy of a memoir happens to be talented enough to write a good one. Yes, yes! I wish I had come up with that line! *********************************************** Just finis......more

Goodreads review by J.L. on August 30, 2013

Originally, I read this book in 2008, but it was well worth reading again. This is not your ordinary memoir!......more

Goodreads review by Imogen on December 19, 2009

Nick Flynn is a poet, and I don't really read poetry. I don't have a criticism of poetry as a whole, obviously- I mean, I might say I do, but if I did that would just be to be provocative and a pain in your ass- it's just hard for me to pay attention in the way you have to pay attention, and to real......more

Goodreads review by Rick on December 25, 2021

Man. This book is beautiful. It reads like a Springsteen song mixed with homelessness and hard drugs. Or maybe a sober of Alan Ginsberg. Maybe a sober Alan Ginsberg is basically a low life Springsteen. Anyways, beautiful prose. The writing flows like a mountain steam, not too much, not too little. J......more

Goodreads review by cathy on May 10, 2007

The credit for this book’s colorful title goes to Nick Flynn’s dad, the main protagonist in his memoir of coming to know himself through a chance reunion with his father. The story initially focuses on the early parallels between young Flynn and his estranged, alcoholic father. The author then bring......more

Quotes

“Nick Flynn’s devastating memoir does what only significant works of art can do—it shows us a world we know, but fail to see or understand. No one who reads [Being Flynn] will ever walk through a city in the same way again. If I say that Flynn’s book ranks with Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time, I mean it as the highest possible praise.” Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours

“What a piece of work…eloquent, funny, unsentimental, and bravely inventive.” Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Mystic River and Shutter Island

“A stunningly beautiful new memoir…A near-perfect work of literature.” San Francisco Chronicle

“Tough as nails and tender as a bruise, Flynn’s muscular, poetic language renders this hard-knock tale transcendent.” Washington Post

“Flynn’s talents are considerable—he has a compelling voice and a wry sense of humor, especially about himself.” New York Times

“My favorite book of the past few years, and the best memoir since Stop-Time, This Boy’s Life, and Liar’s Club.” Chris Offutt, author of Kentucky Straight

“Ultimately, this book is an artful meditation on how we decide how much we are limited—or enhanced by—what we inherit, and on how difficult it is to give and receive care in this world.” New York Times Book Review

“Punchy language…The book never seems hopeless, because readers know the author has succeeded at doing what his father only pretended to do: write, and write well.” Publishers Weekly

“Likely one of the best books you will read…Hilarious and heartbreaking by turns, it has been compared to Conroy’s Stop-Time and David Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius but is really in a class by itself. Highly recommended.” Library Journal

Awards

  • PEN/Martha Albrand Award
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