The Afterlife (Paperback)

From the Publisher: The author of Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World and The Verificationist presents a series of observations about the state of consciousness as it is altered by memories, fantasies, and alcoholism, in a portrait of the author's family that partially comes to terms with the nature of addiction and the limitations of self-healing. Reprint. 25,000 first printing. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice   In the winter of 2000, shortly after his mother's death, Donald Antrim began writing about his family. In pieces that appeared in The New Yorker and were anthologized in Best American Essays, Antrim explored his intense and complicated relationships with his mother, Louanne, an artist, teacher, and ferociously destabilizing alcoholic; his gentle grandfather, who lived in the mountains of North Carolina and who always hoped to save his daughter from herself; and his father, who married his mother twice.   The Afterlife is an elliptical, sometimes tender, sometimes blackly hilarious portrait of a family--faulty, cracked, enraging--and of a man struggling to learn the nature of his origins. The author of Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World and The Verificationist presents a series of observations about the state of consciousness as it is altered by memories, fantasies, and alcoholism, in a portrait of the author's family that partially comes to terms with the nature of addiction and the limitations of self-healing. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.