A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me
A Memoir
Book - 2015
Jason Schmidt wasn't surprised when he came home one day during his junior year of high school and found his father, Mark, crawling around in a giant pool of blood. Things like that had been happening a lot since Mark had been diagnosed with HIV, three years earlier. Jason's life with Mark was full of secrets--about drugs, crime, and sex. If the straights--people with normal lives--ever found out any of those secrets, the police would come. Jason's home would be torn apart. So the rule, since Jason had been in preschool, was never to tell the straights anything. A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me is a funny, disturbing memoir full of brutal insights and unexpected wit that explores the question: How do you find your moral center in a world that doesn't seem to have one?
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Publisher:
New York : Farrar Straus Giroux, 2015
Characteristics:
viii, 421 pages ; 22 cm
Edition:
First edition
Copyright Date:
©2015
ISBN:
9780374380137 (hbk.)
0374380139 (hbk.)
0374380139 (hbk.)
Call Number:
TEEN 362.196979 SCHMIDT
Alternative Title:
List of things that did not kill me
Opinion
From Library Staff
From Library Staff
Throughout the 1970's and '80's, Jason spent a nomadic life with his abusive father before succumbing to AIDS, leaving Jason alone to forge a new future for himself. Intense, and hard to put down.
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Add a CommentReally well written. I'm not a big fan of memoir generally but I found this one really excellent reading. Schmidt had a hard hard childhood but he isn't in the least bit maudlin about it. He just really conveys what it was like and that gives one pause.
During the 1960's and 70's the author's emotionally unstable father moved him from place to place before dying from AIDs. Graphic, brutal, honest.
A true story, interesting, funny, heartbreaking. A very good book, but I found the ending a bit abrupt.
Great book, even if the theme was a bit dark. it really gave insight into what it was like for the author growing up. The writing style is amazing and leaves its mark on you. Very memorable.