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The Ticking Is The Bomb (2010)

by Nick Flynn(Favorite Author)

3.9 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0393068161 (ISBN13: 9780393068160)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

review 1: This was quite an unusual read that I picked up because I found a poem of his (“fire”) that I really enjoyed. The library didn’t have any of his poetry, but it had this book with an intriguing title, so I grabbed it. It is alternatingly a memoir and meditation on torture, but its structure is unassuming and freeform. It pairs disparate scenes and ideas with a sense of deep wonder and shock. It does not come together as a focused statement about torture, but as a reflection on pain and fear of all kinds. I was really impressed with his ability to convey horror for horror’s sake, rather than to have a didactic or other explicit goal. This made it a much more enjoyable and relatable read.The book also forced me to remember the Bush years, which put the current governm... moreent in perspective. Now we have to deal with spying programs and government dysfunction, but during that time, the government was efficiently carrying out a disastrous war, widespread torture, and maintained a strict position of self-righteous denial. That we now have a relatively ineffectual president who publicly acknowledges the failings of his administration feels much safer.
review 2: In his wonderfully written memoir, Flynn intricately weaves together his life with the iconic photographs of Abu Ghraib and what it means to be tortured. I got a sense that he has been tortured from his past where his mother committed suicide and his father was an alcoholic, hoarder, bank-robber, and, at one point, homeless.The stance that Flynn takes on torture is that the purpose of the cruel act is not to gain information—the reason why torture is used by the CIA—but because of power; this is a message to everyone that there is no limit to that our country will do when it feels threatened. He also writes, “What they will say when they look back on this time is that torture continued from the death of Christ for over two thousand years—a strange, primitive reenactment.”Just as a body of work, the memoir is very beautifully written. The way he talks about his daughter and how unsure he was of her before she was born was very inspirational. I believe that if a lot more parents were honest with themselves that they would say the same thing. less

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