When journalist David Sheff sent his son Nic off to college in 2002, he already knew that his firstborn had substance-abuse issues, said Janet Maslin in The New York Times. Months earlier, Nic had been arrested for missing a court date on a marijuana possession charge. Nic’s next drug of choice—crystal meth—posed greater dangers. But David chose to believe the therapist who predicted that college would straighten Nic out. Instead, Nic dropped out within months. His father found him in a garbage-strewn alleyway. He blamed himself for being optimistic for too long. “At what point,” he writes in a new memoir, is one’s child “no longer going through a phase?”
Sheff’s Beautiful Boy is noteworthy in part because Starbucks started selling it in its 6,500 retail outlets in the U.S. this week, said Craig Harris in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The book is sure to be a hit. But Nic has simultaneously published his own memoir, Tweak, said Cassandra Jardine in the London Daily Telegraph. The two books offer readers a chance to marvel at how closely the pair’s outlooks now mirror each other. Nic, who has been clean more than two years, credits his father with insisting on rehab repeatedly, even after three programs failed. David just wishes he had intervened sooner. “The worry is that you encourage rebellion by overreacting,” he says. “But I now think it’s better than underreacting.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Georgia's new foreign influence billUnder the Radar Critics claim the 'Russian law' could stifle dissent and wreck the country's chances of joining the EU
-
'Making a police state out of the liberal university'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
8 looming climate tipping points that imperil our planetThe Explainer New reports detail the thresholds we may be close to crossing
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”