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The End of the World as We Know It
Robert Goolrick
Scenes from a Life
Algonquin Books
March 2007
On Sale: March 23, 2007
224 pages
ISBN: 1565124812
EAN: 9781565124813
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
In the tradition of Mary Karr's The Liars' Club and Rick
Bragg's All Over but the Shoutin', Robert Goolrick has
crafted a classic memoir of childhood and the secrets hidden
in a heart that can't forget. In the Goolrick home there was
a law: Never talk about the family in the outside world,
never reveal the slightest crack in the facade. In The End
of the World as We Know It, the author takes us back to the
seemingly idyllic world his father and mother created in
their home in a small Southern college town, a world of
gentle men and lovely ladies and cocktails and party
dresses—a world being eroded by a family history of
alcoholism. As Goolrick grew to be a man, his childhood held
memories that would not let go, memories that held a secret
that followed him wherever he went, defining and directing
his days. Over time, the secret grew so big it threatened to
rip the world apart. And then it did. With devastating honesty and razor-sharp wit, he looks back
with love, and with anger, at the parents who both created
his world and destroyed it. As Lee Smith (author of On Agate
Hill) observed, "Alcohol may be the real villain in this
pain-permeated, exquisitely written memoir of a Virginia
childhood—but it is also filled with absolutely dead-on
social commentary of this very particular time and place. A
brave, haunting, riveting book."
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