This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire

About this book

"A searing memoir from critically acclaimed author Nick Flynn, on how childhood spills into parenthood. When Nick Flynn was a child, his mother set fire to their home. With the spare lyricism and dark irony of his classic, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, Flynn excavates the terrain of his traumatic upbringing and his mother's suicide. Now a parent himself, he discovers that he too may be burning his house down. He returns with his young daughter to the landscape of his youth, reflecting on how his "feral childhood" has him still in its reins. This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire confronts Flynn's struggle and his failings-including a five- year affair, begun when his daughter was a toddler-with fierce candor. His marriage in crisis, Flynn seeks answers from his therapist, who tells him: "You have the ethics of a drowning man." Alternating literary analysis and philosophy with intimate memoir and the bedtime stories he tells his daughter, Flynn probes his deepest ethical dilemmas"-- When Flynn was a child, his mother set fire to their home; she later committed suicide. Now a parent himself, Flynn has carried that fire with him until it threatens to burn down his own house. Confronting his struggle and his failings; his marriage in crisis, Flynn sought answers from his therapist. Alternating literary analysis and philosophy with intimate memoir and the bedtime stories he tells his daughter, Flynn probes his deepest ethical dilemmas while examining how childhood spills into parenthood. -- adapted from jacket