“What do you mean what’s it about? Read it,” I said.
“I will, but you have to think about what it’s about. Like the stuff you’d find on a book jacket, okay?”
Later that night in bed I suddenly felt inspired and woke up my wife. “It’s about my growing up more American than most Americans and then, in 1976, being ripped away from my home, my friends, and family and sent off to Irish boarding school with my big brother, Roger, and how he got drunk, cussed out the headmaster and broke a window, so the headmaster expelled him which left me alone and even more lonely and homesick than I already was. In retaliation my father moved me to Northern Ireland with the idea that my grandparents were just down the road a bit. Now I not only had to contend with being lonely and homesick, but also physical and emotional abuse. And, of course, the constant threat of terrorism. And while I was going through all that, Roger got himself kicked out of two more schools because of the old habits that caused us to be sent to Ireland in the first place and ended up on the Mediterranean tourist island of Majorca going to an American high school. It seemed he was constantly rewarded for doing wrong while I languished in misery. Oh, eventually, I returned to the States only to find that I’d changed – I was no longer American at all and don’t fit in. For years I blamed being sent to boarding school but asked myself if it was worth it for all the experiences in exotic places I enjoyed?
That’s when I realized wifey was snoring, so I nudged her awake. “Well? What did you think?”
Through a sleep haze she replied, “You haven’t told me what it’s about.”
“Huh? What are you talking about? I did so.” And I started going on again about what happens in the book. By the time I stopped to take a breath, wifey was snoring once more. Another strategic nudge got her attention.
“You’re telling me about the book, not what the book is about,” she said.
“Well, it’s about a lot of things,” I replied. “A lot happens.”
“Yes, but if someone asks you what it’s about they’ll be asleep before you get to the point. Narrow it down to a sentence or two.”
I’d read about that. Advice for writing query letters said developing a one or two line synopsis – the hook, is what I needed. “How ‘bout I go with the sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll and boarding school angle?” I then rattled on about how my brother was always out partying, smoking dope, messing with the chicks. It all started when Dad went to Iran, or was it Japan this time, on business and Roger grew his hair long. Dad was not pleased when he returned. “Those goddamned Beatles,” he’d say waving his fist. And thus the friction between Dad and Roger grew with Mom getting caught in the middle. Eventually I started getting in on the act thinking I was being cool, but I never got in trouble at school…well, not too much at least. And I never got in trouble with the police. Of course Roger got busted for stealing a case of beer and Mom and Dad pleading with him to help them find a solution.
“Send me back to boarding school,” he said. And that’s how I ended up in Ireland in 1976.
“Oh, did I mention Roger had already been sent to boarding school in Northern Ireland in 1970?” I asked. “And that my parents were British of Irish descent and…”
“No, no, no!” Wifey cut me off. “You’ve gone and written a whole book again. Narrow it down to the overall gist of it. In the simplest terms, what’s the book about?”
“Well,” I said, “it’s a memoir about how I got caught in the current of my parents’ desperate attempt to save my brother from himself, how I dealt with the circumstances I found myself in as a result and, ultimately, my realizing that things were not always as they seemed – that in order to move forward I had to let go of the past.”
“That’s just about perfect,” she replied. “Now, can we go to sleep?”
