Iwanski recalls growing up in the American Midwest in the 1960s and ‘70s in a series of graphic and unforgettable vignettes. Like the English diarist Samuel Pepys, he’s unsparing in portraying the less appealing aspects of his younger self—his abusiveness towards his first wife, his omnivorous sexuality—and it’s this sense of a fully developed and complex personality that makes the book endlessly absorbing. Iwanski’s quarrels with his father and his rejection of all authority take up much of the first half of the book. As he matures sexually, Iwanski enjoys both pre-marital and extra-marital exploits. A fling in a hotel with a girl named Suzy is interrupted when the police arrive to arrest her for stealing a car. Later, he has a Calypso-esque encounter with a rich woman named Maggie, who offers to become his patron. However, when Iwanski’s wife learns about Maggie, she sets fire to their bedsheets.

The young Iwanski demonstrates a casual approach to life that’s reminiscent of the character played by Ethan Hawke in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. This book, like that film, is a coming-of-age story of astonishing power, a work of almost overwhelming nostalgia that draws much of its strength from its characters’ ability to mature and learn from their mistakes. Iwanski portrays the most sordid subjects—familial incest, alcoholism, war crimes—soberly and without judgment while, in the process, shining a light on America’s long-gestating mental health crisis. For example, in one chilling passage, a Vietnam veteran whose eyes “reflected a certain casket-grey hollowness” describes raping peasants and then shooting them in the head. A scene in which the author and his son Jeff encounter two tornadoes is probably the book’s best scene. It is perfectly paced, with a hint of the mystical about it. In short, Iwanski has written a stunning book.

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