The End of the World as We Know It

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

Robert Goolrick

2007, Alonquin Books of Chapel Hill, $22.95 USA, Hardcover, 213 pages

A haunting, beautifully written tale of love in all of its facets: cherished, memorable, ethereal, painful, mysterious, cruel, redeeming. I read the book jacket over and over. Was this tale real? Was his story fiction or not? Because I could not believe it. I was both aghast and hypnotized. I was intrigued by the beginning, and awake, in painful awe, at the end. This is not a story for the weak. But it's a story that needs to be heard, and needs to be told by Goolrick. The calm, nearly medical tone underscores the sense of surreal maturity that has overtaken our hero. He is both touched, and untouched. As we delve deeper into his memories, there is a repeating theme of addiction: alcoholic, physical and emotional. A child whose life is changed, and his destiny altered by one ghastly event, who, becomes immediately protected and hated by the family he dreadfully wants to love and be loved by. I was hypnotized by his seamless interweaving of memories and reason. For some other writer, this would be a trite and boring effect, but Goolrick manages to utilize the skills of reflection in a masterful way, enthralling me as we spiral together, both reader and writer, descending into his bordering madness, and near its end, striving for air. This novel supersedes notions of sexuality and focuses on our universal human need to be loved, wanted and needed. The writer pays homage to the tenderness of children, his coming-of-age story embracing the hedonism of an alcohol infused family to rise from its eventual ashes, a thing of beauty, to be held and, we hope, loved forever and tenderly, as we all deserve. And especially you, dear, dear Robert. Overall, on the heat scale, "white hot".