June 29, 2015
Humorist Key was born in Memphis, but when he was six, his father moved the family back to his native Mississippiâa state, according to Key, that's "too impoverished to afford punctuation, where some families save their whole lives for a semicolon." Ever the raconteur, Key fills this rollicking memoir with tales of growing up with a larger-than-life father and being raised in the country, where boys would learn to fish and hunt and farm. Key soon discovers that he'd rather be reading than hunting, though he's reluctant ever to speak with his father about his hobby; the men in his family shun all books except the Bible, which they read more out of fear and guilt than genuine interest. Eventually, after Key kills his first deer, he and his father come to détente about Key's reading, and the son spends his mornings in his deer stand reading Tolkien rather than picking off bucks. When Key heads off to college and then becomes a husband and a father, he realizes how much he's inherited his father's "redneck" ways, but he also recognizes that he can never love what his father loves, no matter how hard he's tried. Key's memoir concludes by narrating the struggles many men experience: sons never living up to their fathers' expectations, sons feeling that they've let down or hurt their fathers, a sometimes lengthy period of alienation, and the healing moments brought on by the father's new bond with his son's children.