Review by Booklist Review
In this poignant memoir, the author of Big Fish (2012) recounts his friendship with his brother-in-law, cartoonist William Nealy. Wallace met Nealy when he was 12, and Nealy, age 18, was poised to jump off a roof into the family pool. Nealy's risky outdoor adventures and expert, cartoon-infused manuals and maps made him a hero in the subculture of extreme sports, "the R. Crumb of whitewater." To family and friends, Nealy was a stalwart and a fixer; to young Wallace, he was a "rock star." But living a self-imposed platonic ideal of manhood proved unsustainable. At 48, the fearless, caring man Wallace admired, who even inspired Wallace to write, died by suicide. A cache of journals found after Nealy's death revealed "a broken self" hidden within the heroic identity that a lonely, nerdy child had created on the "building blocks" of cartooning and scouting. Wallace's storytelling skill captures the vibrant personality Nealy showed the world, and his emotional candor delineates the tragedy of a good man "who was toxic only to himself."
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Novelist Wallace (Big Fish) pays loving tribute to his late brother-in-law, William Nealy, in this deeply felt memoir. When Wallace was 13, his older sister brought her daredevil 20-year-old boyfriend home to meet the family. From that day, the two men formed a friendship that endured until Nealy's suicide at age 48. "William was more alive than I was or would ever be. He flew, and I, who couldn't, just watched," Wallace writes of their dynamic. Throughout, he speaks admiringly of his brother-in-law's "adventurous teenager" spirit, and how he led the author on kayaking trips, fossil hunts, and ill-advised jumps into his in-laws' pool from the roof of their house. Various vignettes focus on Nealy's connection to his family, as when he took a teenage Wallace to his first concert (Alice Cooper) or tenderly cared for Wallace's sister when she was stricken with rheumatoid arthritis at age 21. Reading Nealy's journals after his death, Wallace comes to understand the depths of his brother-in-law's pain, calling the writings "the longest suicide note in the history of the world." Punctuated by Nealy's captivating line drawings, Wallace's elegiac narrative shimmers with deep admiration for a man who always played by his own rules and stood by the people he loved. This will entrance readers from the first page. Agent: Jamie Chambliss and Steve Troya, Folio Literary Management. (Apr.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A chronicle of an inspiring relationship profoundly shaken by suicide. Novelist Wallace's first work of nonfiction examines his deep connection to illustrator and outdoor adventurer William Nealy (1953-2001), who was also the author's brother-in-law and an intimate friend and mentor. Wallace was a teenager when he first met Nealy, who had just recently begun dating his sister, Holly. They would eventually marry, and they remained mutually supportive through Holly's struggles with debilitating arthritis and Nealy's bouts with depression, until his death at age 48. Wallace traces their enduring friendship and the many escapades they shared together, from fishing expeditions to illicit drug runs across state lines, and he deftly reveals Nealy's expansive range of interests and accomplishments. He was also a kind of MacGyver, continually building and fixing just about anything. More significantly, the author relates how Nealy's gregarious and adventurous approach to living influenced his own life and eventual career as a writer. "He was the one who would give me the idea for the life I ended up living, even if what I ended up doing was nothing like him or what he did," writes Wallace. "He showed me how it was done: experience, imagine, then create. Every book I've written is dedicated to him in invisible ink. I doubt I would have written a one of them without him, or that I ever would have considered being an artist at all." Though there were signs of Nealy's mental struggles in the final years leading up to his death, it wasn't until several years later, as Wallace reluctantly read through Nealy's private journals, that the long-standing severity of his condition became fully evident, bringing into question much of what he thought he knew about the man. "There were three or four copies of his suicide notes there as well," writes Wallace. "His driving license, his passport. My heart felt as if it were floating in my chest." A bold and compassionate exploration of male friendship and the devastating impact of suicide. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
