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Memories from a Sinking Ship: A Novel
Winner of the 2007 Christopher Isherwood Foundation Award for Fiction
Reminiscent of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, Memories from a Sinking Ship travels the landscape of a turbulent world seen through a boy’s steady gaze. Like Twain’s Mississippi River and Hemingway’s Big Two-Hearted, Gifford’s Chicago, New Orleans, and the highways and byways between offer us mesmerizing lives lost in the kaleidoscope of postwar America, in particular those of Roy’s adrift and disappointed mother and his hoodlum father.
Reminiscent of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, Memories from a Sinking Ship travels the landscape of a turbulent world seen through a boy’s steady gaze. Like Twain’s Mississippi River and Hemingway’s Big Two-Hearted, Gifford’s Chicago, New Orleans, and the highways and byways between offer us mesmerizing lives lost in the kaleidoscope of postwar America, in particular those of Roy’s adrift and disappointed mother and his hoodlum father.
- GenresFictionShort Stories
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
2 people are currently reading
61 people want to read
About the author
Barry Gifford
142 books205 followersBarry Gifford is an American author, poet, and screenwriter known for his distinctive mix of American landscapes and film noir- and Beat Generation-influenced literary madness.
He is described by Patrick Beach as being "like if John Updike had an evil twin that grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and wrote funny..."He is best known for his series of novels about Sailor and Lula, two sex-driven, star-crossed protagonists on the road. The first of the series, Wild at Heart, was adapted by director David Lynch for the 1990 film of the same title. Gifford went on to write the screenplay for Lost Highway with Lynch. Much of Gifford's work is nonfiction.
He is described by Patrick Beach as being "like if John Updike had an evil twin that grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and wrote funny..."He is best known for his series of novels about Sailor and Lula, two sex-driven, star-crossed protagonists on the road. The first of the series, Wild at Heart, was adapted by director David Lynch for the 1990 film of the same title. Gifford went on to write the screenplay for Lost Highway with Lynch. Much of Gifford's work is nonfiction.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 6, 2025
These stories are a real treasure of American literature. Gifford’s writing for young Roy stands amongst his best, a wonderful insight into 1950s and 1960s America, and a very different childhood centred in Chicago.
The stories are brief, just a few pages each, and are in a vague chronological order here, though oddly not in another collection I have read, Wyoming.
In the late 1980s Gifford began writing stories based on his childhood, not self-portraits, rather portraits of his mother and father, and the world they inhabited, from which he had been abandoned as a young boy, as if, in his words, ‘a visitor from another planet’. As well as Wyoming, there were two other books. It wasn’t until 2006 that he completed the concluding part, which meant he could go back and thin out the rest. This is the resulting novel, divided into three parts. It won the Christopher Isherwood Foundation Prize for Fiction in 2006.
The stories are brief, just a few pages each, and are in a vague chronological order here, though oddly not in another collection I have read, Wyoming.
In the late 1980s Gifford began writing stories based on his childhood, not self-portraits, rather portraits of his mother and father, and the world they inhabited, from which he had been abandoned as a young boy, as if, in his words, ‘a visitor from another planet’. As well as Wyoming, there were two other books. It wasn’t until 2006 that he completed the concluding part, which meant he could go back and thin out the rest. This is the resulting novel, divided into three parts. It won the Christopher Isherwood Foundation Prize for Fiction in 2006.
September 26, 2019
This is a good book but it's a real stretch to call it a novel. Besides, I've read 90% of the stories herein in other Gifford books like The Cuban Club, Wyoming, American Falls and Do the Blind Dream? But if I hadn't read those other volumes first, I would have really enjoyed this diffuse series of vignettes.
August 28, 2008
This book created some interesting dark images of the 50's and 60's from a child's viewpoint. The mother was lousy, the dad was aloof, and Roy left me feeling sad and tired. Friends who live in Chicago might enjoy some of the "Chi" gangster references. Final thought is that gasoline must have been really cheap.
November 9, 2012
A new favorite of mine. Reading these micro stories is like looking at pieces of a mosaic and then stepping back to watch them blend together. Or maybe it's like looking at still shots from a film and imagining the connections. Either way, Gifford manages to evoke places and pinpoint memories without a trace of sentimentalism; his writing drew me in like a magnet. Loved it.
July 31, 2007
Very short stories about growing up in 1950s America with divorced parents who are on the verge of criminality. Not Gifford's noir, but very readable, even if it never forms a fully exposed picture.
March 22, 2008
Amazingly evocative vignettes about growing up in 50's Chicago, with a lot of dry humor and colorful characters. I couldn't put it down and read it in a day.
July 3, 2017
A quick easy read of short stories about a boy's childhood felt no real emotional connection to Roy or his family and friends just passing through like one of his many road trips .
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews