Home Is Burning: A Memoir
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 125006886X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
For fans of David Sedaris and Dave Eggers, a very funny book about very unfunny things.
"The funniest thing I've ever read - profane, self-aware, and ruthlessly honest. Dan Marshall might be a self-described spoiled white jerk, but he's also a depraved comedic genius." (Justin St. Germain, author of SON OF A GUN)
"Horrible. Hysterical. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Just like life." (Jenny Lawson, "New York Times" bestselling author of LET'S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED)
Dan's mom has always had cancer. First diagnosed when he was only ten years old, she was the model of resilience throughout his childhood, fighting her disease with tenacity and a mouth foul enough to make a sailor blush. But just as she faces a relapse, her husband is diagnosed with ALS. Dan, a recent college graduate living the good life in Los Angeles, has no choice but to return home to help.
Reinstalled in his parents' basement Dan is reunited with his siblings. His older sister Tiffany is resentful, having stayed closer to home to bear the brunt of their mother's illness. Younger brother Greg comes to lend a hand, giving up a journalism career and evenings cruising Chicago gay bars. Michelle, a sullen teenager is experimenting with drinking and flirting with her 35-year-old soccer coach. And baby sister Chelsea-the oddest duck in a family of misfits- lives in a dream world centered around dance. Together this unlikely group forms Team Terminal, going to battle against their parents' illnesses, and occasionally each other. Not even the family cats escape unscathed.
As Dan steps into his role as caregiver, wheelchair wrangler, and sibling referee, he watches pieces of his previous life slip away, and comes to realize that you don't get to choose when it's time to grow up.
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Situation, she pushed school, work, and BCB to the side so that she could spend more time with our dad. Jessica returned from Thailand with Creepy Todd and was around more. She seemed to be doing a lot better since the marriage. Maybe it was actually a good thing for her. Chelsea wouldn’t talk about the situation outright, but she’d occasionally come sit next to my dad and cry uncontrollably without saying a word. As usual, Stana put it best: “It is be sad house when there is no more Daddy.”.
There gripping the wheel and crying. I knocked on the window. “Regina, what the fuck are you doing here?” I asked. “Nothing. Just grocery shopping,” she said. “Really? Most people don’t cry when they grocery shop,” I said. She started crying even harder. She told me how mean her ex was being to her. She had come all the way from Brazil to marry the bastard and now she was completely alone. I convinced my mom that it was okay for Regina to be around during the last couple of days. “Fine, but.
Some clunky machine breathed for him, sounded like a nightmare to me. I took a sip of my eggnog and looked at Abby’s sweet face, trying to push the image out of my mind. The next item on the list was what to do with my dad’s newspapers. My siblings and I were too busy pursuing our own interests to give a fuck about the family business. My dad had a partner, Kris, but Kris was looking to retire. So my dad figured that he’d sell the papers to make things easier when he got sick. He certainly.
Happening, Stana was trying to figure out how she could put a stop to the decline of our house. She noticed the obscene amounts of cat piss popping up all over the place and started blaming the cats for everything. Construction in the basement had finished, so I moved from the dining room down into the basement. One Monday morning, Stana darted into my basement room—one of the cat-piss hot spots. “Danny, you is up?” Stana yelled through my door as I lay in bed, still in my boxers, rubbing the.
Floor like a sack of cancerous potatoes. Something at some point would spark a fire—maybe the Christmas lights. Everything would go up in flames. We’d try to get my limp dad and unconscious mom out of there, but it would be too late. We’d get out and save ourselves, but everything would be lost. All our pictures. All our memories. All our Christmas presents. All our parents. We’d look at the smoking house from the outside and say something like, “Looks like this won’t be a very merry Christmas.