AN ALCOHOLIC'S COLLATERAL DAMAGE

A memoir about life with a troubled mother and other family difficulties.

Author Sanborn was born in Vermont in 1952. This memoir spans his early youth through his college years. During that time, he and his immediate family lived in several different places—“We had moved seven times and attended five different schools in four years.” It was difficult for Sanborn to make lasting friendships, and his father eventually abandoned the family, leaving the author and his siblings at the mercy of their erratic mother, who struggled with alcoholism (“The only way she would be sober is if she ran out of money”). Sanborn recalls that he “daydreamed a lot, escaping the unpleasant reality.” Although time spent on his grandparents’ farm offered some respite, his grandfather could dispense “degrading criticism” over the smallest mistake. Even with such challenges, Sanborn eventually made it into Saint Michael’s College. Each chapter chronicles a period in the author’s life, like the time his younger brother attempted to flee a doctor’s visit, and analyzes the episodes with the benefit of hindsight. For example, in one chapter, “Earliest, Preschool Early Years,” Sanborn reflects that his understanding of his early life “was distorted through the interpretations and demands of my mother.” The memoir is similarly raw throughout. The author recalls, for instance, how his mother liked to watch TV on a chair that was “dirty with urine.” There are episodes of rural brutality, such as when he euthanizes a dog by shooting it between the eyes, then watching it fall into “death throws.” While the rawness packs a punch, some of the takeaways feel like unnecessary truisms (“Though alcoholism skips generations, the effects are prevalent across generations”). But such comments don’t take away from the work’s impact. If scenes like Sanborn, as a young boy, eating peanut-butter–and-margarine sandwiches daily to stretch the family’s welfare check don’t evoke the reader’s sympathy, there are plenty of other gut-wrenching moments.

An unflinchingly honest account of growing up in domestic chaos.