Things I Didn’t Know

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Number of Pages: 528

There have been, in the past 20 years or so, several memoirs that have struck a crucial intellectual and emotional chord. William Styron’s DARKNESS VISIBLE is one. Frank McCourt’s ANGELA’S ASHES is another. In many ways, this book belongs on the same shelf. The opening lengthy chapter is a brutal and briliant description of the terrible WA car accident several years ago that nearly took his life and left him physically and mentally shattered. In this beautifully written and searingly honest opening, that could be a small book in itself, Hughes makes you understand the trauma of devastating physical damage – and most important, he shows us the thought processes that one goes through when confronting death and a reemergence towards life. Using the experience of the accident to justify the need to explore his past, Hughes then takes us through his childhood. What makes this book extraordinary is that it is not one bit self-indulgent. He writes of intimately personal details, but he uses every aspect of his life to expound on broader, universal subjects. he uses his fractured and incomplete relationship with his father to explore family relationships. He uses his father’s heroic