{ "item_title" : "Dad, Love, Me", "item_author" : [" Matthew Quick "], "item_description" : "THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE - Written in the form of a letter to his ailing father, this debut memoir from the bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook explores the complicated burden of caring for an abusive parent who is dying--here is Matthew Quick's most personal and potent work to date. This book will gut you and then, somehow, put you back together. --Scott Galloway - Dad, Love, Me is a masterpiece....It will change people's lives. --Lori Gottlieb - A gut punch of a memoir...What a gift this book is. --Catherine Newman - For all its heavy subject matter, the book has a remarkably light touch and sense of grace. --Kirkus Reviews What begins as an excavation of childhood trauma gradually becomes something rarer and more enlightening: an account of what happens when forgiveness arrives only after the parent who most needs it begins losing the ability to understand it....It's difficult to read this book without feeling that some redemption and reconciliation--between parents and children, between scarred memory and forgiveness--have become possible. --The New York Times On the surface, Matthew Quick seemed to have it all--a loving wife, a thriving career as a novelist, and a beautiful home. He'd traveled all over the world advocating for mental health awareness, standing before crowds as a success story. But secretly, he was depressed and some days, he didn't want to live. Years earlier, when he first told his father he wanted to be a novelist, the response was immediate and brutal: Idiot That voice--angry and belittling--would echo through Quick's mind for years. He channeled his pain into his debut novel, The Silver Linings Playbook, crafting a complex father-son dynamic drawn straight from his own life. The book became a New York Times bestseller and was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. Still, the approval Quick longed for never came. His father remained cold and withholding. The deeper the rift between them grew, the deeper Quick sank into anxiety and addiction. In this book, Quick takes readers deep into his psyche, as he wrestles with both his own mental health and his father's cognitive decline. A health scare finally forces Quick to get sober, but then, overcome by creative paralysis, writer's block threatens to end his career. The blank page is unbearable. As his desperation for healing peaks, Quick turns to a Jungian analyst he nicknames Zeus. In the safety of analysis, as Quick's repressed pain and shame surface, he finally cracks. Just as he is putting himself back together, his father is diagnosed with dementia. Suddenly, the clock is ticking. If there is ever going to be reconciliation, it has to happen now. Quick and his wife pack up their lives in coastal North Carolina, drive eight hours, and move into a house just around the corner from Quick's parents, on an island right outside of Beaufort, South Carolina. There, as his father slips further and further away, Quick races to make a healing connection. Dad, Love, Me is Quick's raw, vulnerable, and deeply moving account of what it means to forgive a parent who never really knew how to love you. It's about wounds that never fully heal, and the power of showing up anyway. This beautifully brave and life-affirming memoir is a must read for anyone who has been starved of love but wants to keep loving anyway.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers2.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/66/809/175/1668091755_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "30.00", "online_price" : "30.00", "our_price" : "30.00", "club_price" : "30.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "30.00" } }

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After admiring the late Pat Conroy’s novels and memoirs for decades—and relating to the “father issues so boldly on display”—Matthew Quick began telling himself, “Your life has become a Pat Conroy book.” Quick and his wife had moved to Lady’s Island, South Carolina, to help care for his aging parents. Now, the author of The Silver Linings Playbook and eight other novels puts his own life fiercely on display in Dad, Love, Me. This “long overdue letter to my father” covers some of the same ground as Quick’s beloved debut novel and its 2012 film adaptation: most of all, an arduous, dramatic love of the Philadelphia Eagles and an ability to wrestle with toxic behaviors and relationships in a way that’s ultimately healing. Quick nimbly juggles past and present in a narrative that encapsulates the relationships among three generations of Quick men. Despite the “tornado-like fury that had been secretly—and not so secretly—swirling in my chest since I was very young,” Quick hopes to avoid writing a “dark, score-settling” account, realizing, “If I yielded to that temptation, would I be any better than my father had been to me at his worst?” Quick acknowledges his own demons, including alcohol dependency, smoking and suicidal thoughts, while chronicling how his wife’s support and years of Jungian analysis (with a therapist he calls “Zeus”) have helped rescue him. As a result, he writes about his worst moments with his father with great insight and even tenderness for the damaged little boys deep inside both of their psyches. He also offers a poignant account of the impact of dementia, which is turning his “father’s brain into mashed cauliflower.” For instance, as the two of them pick up a pizza during a local Christmas festival, people around them “were laughing and singing, their hearts practically glowing with holiday cheer.” Speaking directly to his father—as he does throughout—he adds, “You looked like you were about to reenact your father’s storming of the Normandy beaches in World War II.” Quick’s Christian faith has been part of his recovery, and he mentions it from time to time, at one point concluding—as he wrestles with how his father has treated him throughout his life: “I think the story of Christ is a metaphor for reaching masculine maturity. The needy-son mentality has to be crucified out of boys if they are to become men.” Regardless of their own spiritual beliefs, readers will likely find Quick’s references to prayers, forgiveness and his quest to “aim upward” with his writing insightful. Quick admits he was “terrified of putting this book into the world,” but ultimately believes that sharing his personal story will have a larger impact: “I don’t write these words to condemn you. I write them to show other men what is possible when we allow love to lead us out of the darkness.” He achieves this goal with Dad, Love, Me.