Devin Fish opens ANSWERING THE HARD QUESTIONS: Let It Be the End of a Chapter, Not the End of the Book not with a dominant directive but with an expectant plea to the reader: “Make sure that your team—whoever they are—knows you, and that you know them. Too many lives have been lost to the silence of the lies we tell ourselves. By continuing to tell our stories—not just mine, but yours as well—we can take the impossible out of someone else’s story.” From that poignant passage on, his narrative reads less like some emotionally distant, anonymous tale and more like a down-to-earth friend’s helpful guidebook on the journey from darkness to eventual light.
From the opening pages, where Fish introduces himself by way of his three non-negotiable life philosophies, the tone is somber but helpfully concrete. Post-introduction honesty and transparency create the route to sharing his story of bad decisions and moral failings. Fish writes, “While I don’t glorify my actions, I also will not hide them,” making a promise to the reader that he wholly and resolutely fulfills throughout the book.
Emerging from the shadows of shame might have compelled Fish to divulge too much in relating his story, but at no point in the narrative does he succumb to gratuitous oversharing. Fish carefully selects which life events to include in the book, and threads them seamlessly to the main points of each chapter. He seems well past using these examples to mourn and berate himself; it seems their only purpose here is to demonstrate how low a person can sink before he eventually starts floating back to the surface of life and personal truth.
Fish’s book barely brushes the memoir genre, focusing on self-help elements instead. By employing end-of-chapter sections where he confronts the reader with the same questions he asked himself on his journey, he goes a great distance to eradicate two of the biggest enemies of his past: self-isolation, and the harmful belief that humans stand alone in their suffering. The reflective questions sprinkled throughout the bite-sized chapters lend a universal quality to Fish’s story, demonstrating how the power of community can often be the difference between life and death.
While ANSWERING THE HARD QUESTIONS doesn’t offer strictly original concepts or philosophical ideas, the book makes good use of the ones included. The reader will easily discern the author’s careful observations and find every chapter relatable at least in some way. As Fish writes, “There is no distance you can travel that will allow you to run away from yourself.”
Devin Fish’s ANSWERING THE HARD QUESTIONS: Let It Be the End of a Chapter, Not the End of the Book presents a brave, thorough, and professionally written account of the author’s life and personal revelations—complete with reflective sections that will prove applicable to many readers.
~ Allison Barilone for IndieReader