In Memories from a Sinking Ship, Barry Gifford - the award-winning author of Wild at Heart - recounts a uniquely American childhood and adolescence through a boy's travels with his mother and ailing gangster father, as well as adventures with neighborhood characters such as The Viper, The Pharaoh, and Skull Dorfman.
Similar in structure and tone to Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories and those in Nelson Algren's The Neon Wilderness, Barry Gifford's Memories cuts to the heart and the bone. Nearly every Gifford story opens a Pandora's box of uncontainable emotions, wrote Richard Dyer in the Boston Globe. There's no one like Barry Gifford, which is the best reason to read him. Set against the backdrop of 1950s and '60s Chicago, the Florida Keys, and New Orleans, Memories conjures up an intimate portrait of an America that no longer exists. Read by the author, this collection contains 25 compelling tales from the novel, with evocative original music by Oscar Bucher.
Barry Gifford's books have been translated into 28 languages. He has also written or co-written numerous films, including Lost Highway, City of Ghosts and Perdita Durango. David Lynch's film Wild at Heart, based on Gifford's novel, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990.
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"Very short stories about growing up in 1950s America with divorced parents who are on the verge of criminality. Not Gifford's noir, but very readable, even if it never forms a fully exposed picture.
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Mark (4 out of 5 stars)