Michael HaineyRecensioni

The author barely knew his father. Bob Hainey, a copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun Times, died alone on a street, when Michael was six years old. He died of an apparent heart attack but there were suspicious signs that there was more to his death. Michael became a journalist himself and as he got older he decided to start digging into the story. He soon discovered a lot more buried family secrets, than he ever expected, along with an unbending code of silence among Bob’s reporter cronies, even decades later. This was a very solid memoir, filled with a lot of Chicago lore and history, centered mainly around the 1960s. Recommended.

This is a beautifully written memoir about a son’s quest to find out what happened the night his father died. I couldn’t put the book down and read it from start to finish in one sitting. I was hooked by the mystery but I loved the stories of the old newspapermen, of growing up in Chicago, of the author's meetings with his father's colleagues and his difficulty in establishing an adult relationship with his mother. Nicely written story.

This is a memoir of a journalist who began in his late 30's to investigate the circumstances of his journalist father's death at 35 when the author was 6 years old. The family myth or story surrounding his death was unclear, had holes and rarely discussed ... never in full. The author is Deputy Editor of GQ and is a superb writer. The story he has crafted is one of perseverance, courage and intensity. The writing is compelling. Read this book if you are brave.
Harry Truman said, "They say I give 'em Hell, but that's wrong. I give 'em the truth, and they think it's Hell."

What's it like to lose a parent at age 6? Michael Hainey sorts out what to trust from his memory and from what others tell him about the death of his father. Bob Hainey's Chicago Sun-Times copy desk is a generation removed from mine, and the son shows the expanse of that generation gap. But his search is entirely relatable to those who try to understand the departed: Starting as self-actualization, the pursuit draws the family closer. In this case it's also a fitting tribute to a newspaperman from the place and time that spawned a journalistic aphorism, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." The author seems to take the advice literally.

Michael Hainey’s father, a “newspaperman”, died when he was only 35, and Michael only 6. As an adult, Michael took a look at the obituaries, but they didn’t really “line up”. There was something odd, and he wanted to find out how his father died. He and his family (mother and brother) had only been told he’d died on the street, after visiting friends.

It was ok. It was a somewhat interesting search for the author to find out what had happened, but I didn’t like the writing style. He wrote in very short choppy non-sentences (well, some were sentences!). It also jumped around in time quite a bit, maybe more in the first half (that, or I got used to it and didn’t notice as much in the second half). The short sentences and short chapters made it quick to read.

Quick read, didn't really like the writing style, but I did connect with the author and his story. My father died when I was young so many of his thoughts/memories resonated with me.

Interesting personal life mystery: a reporter son investigating the long-ago death of his father. It's not an extremely fast-moving or eventful book, but being interested in family history and research in general, I appreciated the process of learning about the past.

A son who remembers -is haunted by- his father's sudden death, and his journey to discover all the facts of that day. Written in precise, but clipped prose, wonderful atmospheric moments, especially invoking the late '60s and the '70s" the songs on the radio, the neighborhoods of Chicago, the politics of the time, the big news stories. It helps that the son followed in his father's footsteps: his dad was one of the copy editors for the Chicago Sun Times, and Michael is a magazine editor. It's important to get the "real" story, and although afraid what he will find, how it will affect others, he is compelled to keep trying. Somehow, in spite of learning (what he'd always suspected) his father was not "with friends" and then died on the street(i.e. the title) Hainey explores the complexity of his father's life with compassion. Likewise, he conveys his deep love for his mother, his grandmother, his brother, and his cousin - all those close to him in his early years. While wandering in it's plot, moving between Hainey's past and present, and that of his parents' past and present, I was compelled to keep reading, to find out alongside Michael what really happened on the day he learned his dad had died, and who his parents were. A good choice also for those who are experiencing the aging -death of someone they love; the portions of the book focused on his grandmother and Michael are humorous, tender and enlightening. Definitely recommended!

This is a damn good book - depressing and sad to journey thru but beautifully crafted, researched and presented. We all create narratives on who we think our parents are - and ignore the obvious flaws and demons which surely they face and have.

The book is also a revealing portrait of a world of journalism, of a Mad Men styled old boys network who took care of each other and made sure the right stories get told about individuals, even though they are not wholly true.

Read this in one sitting, just do it in a sunny place with a fat warm kitten sitting in your lap to cheer you up.

The author took a very long time to tell a very simple story. The writing was very good. Overall, it just wasn't an interesting story.

Interesting and, for the most part, well written...but just not so captivating. I think the author beat around the bush more than I would have liked.

Interesting story. Really pulled me in right away. Thanks to my sister, Jane for suggesting it.

Very touching and sad at the same time, I lost my father with I was three years old so I could really relate to this mans feelings. Mine was not lost in such a mysterious way but it still difficult to lose a parent when you are too young to really remember anything about them.

Compelling and touching story of the author's search for his father within the sterile confines of his family. After his father's death, it was as though he never existed and Hainey became curious as he got older and things didn't add up. This is very well written and leads the reader through the practical and emotional aspects of this difficult journey. It was quite sad to read of the lives of people who had so much promise but suffered as the result of his father's early death.½

Michael Hainey is an editor with GQ magazine and the son of the copy editor of the Chicago Sun Times. His father died when he was 6 and he always wondered exactly how his father died since no one in his family would ever talk about it. His father's obituaries said that he died "after visiting friends," but who were these friends and why had no one ever seen them? Thus begins his search: interviewing old co-workers of his fathers, digging up old records from the Cook County morgue and reconnecting to long-lost relatives. He curses the secrecy of friends and family, yet, paradoxically, keeps his search secret from his own close relatives. As he starts to reveal the truth, he reveals a flawed, but essentially decent, man who he is proud to call his father.

Hainey's book not only reveals the truth about family relationships, but also invokes the lost and freewheeling world of journalism in Chicago. Insightful and moving to the end.

A poignant story about a sons difficult and frustrating search for the truth of the death of his father. He was just a child when his dad died. None of his fathers friends or co-workers would tell him the truth about the night his father died. His uncle and police spun a story so as to save the family the truth. The story didn't make sense and no one questioned it. But the obits in the various newspapers didn't all tell the same story which was suspicious to the son. So he started investigating.

I feel like I missed something in this book. I never really got why the author felt compelled to track down the story of his father's death. His mother was not inclined to talk about it and most of those in the know about the specifics were dead by the time Michael Hainey began his search for information. It was a poignant story, but just didn't resonate with me at all.½

I really connected with this book. I live in the Chicagoland area and know of some of the places that Michael Hainey talks about in this book. My mother would tell me stories about her childhood growing up on the South side of Chicago in the 60's and 70's and some of the stories that Hainey writes about his childhood are similar to my mother's (the smell of the meat-packing plants, playing kick-the-can, the riots during the Democratic Convention). I am almost certain that in this book Hainey mentions my great-grandfather on my father's side (well he doesn't mention him by name but I figured it out). I believe that when he mentions the man that they called "The Greek" that his mother and father used to buy "greasy sandwiches" from that it was my great-grandfather. From what I know of his life he ran a little shack in that exact area in those years that Hainey's father and mother worked for The Tribune.

I was captivated by Hainey's quest to find out what really happened the night his father died. It was heartbreaking to see how it ended up affecting him throughout his life but I liked getting to see the peace it brought him to learn the truth.

I would highly recommend this book to others, especially to book clubs.

A nice book for father's day. A story about a man's quest to learn more about his father... a father who died at a young age when the author was just a boy. The book is funny, poignant, and made me cry a few times -- thinking about my own father, my own family. A few too many side trips slow down the quest, but overall, a nice read.

Michael Hainey was barely six years old when his 35-year-old father was found dead on a deserted Chicago street. Consequently, most of what Hainey knows about his father came to him second-hand via stories and "facts" delivered by his mother, older brother, and other relatives and friends of his father.

Bob Hainey, Michael's father, truly was the stereotypical Hollywood version of a big city newspaperman. Hard drinking, chain smoking, regularly working to the early hours of the morning, he was as likely as not to end his work day at a private party hosted by a co-worker or some obscure friend-of-a-friend. Michael's mother, if she was unhappy about her marriage, hid it from her two sons. And, when her husband was suddenly snatched from her, it was up to her, and only her, to hold the family together. But Barbara Hainey would not talk about what happened on the night her husband died.

The Hainey men are drawn to, and have a distinct talent for, the world of newspaper journalism. Michael's Uncle Dick was the first in the family to make his mark at a Chicago newspaper and he was instrumental in giving Bob his start in the business. Now, years later, Michael has followed his father and uncle into the family business. And he wants to know exactly how is father died - and why - something no one is very anxious to help him figure out.

So Michael Hainey does what an investigative reporter does best: he investigates the "mystery" surrounding Bob Hainey's sudden death at the age of 35. What was his father doing in a strange neighborhood, not one he had any reason to be in at that time of the night; who found him; what exactly did he die of; and, most curious of all, who are the "friends" he was reportedly visiting that night and why had none of them ever stepped forward to explain how his father ended up on the street all alone?

It would not be easy, but Michael Hainey is a persistent man and he was determined to find the answers about his father and what happened on that fateful night. What he hoped to learn had the potential to destroy his idealized image of the father he barely remembered. Michael knew that. But he had to know the truth. Then he had to decide whether he should share that truth with his mother and brother.

After Visiting Friends is an intriguing memoir about the real truth pertaining to those closest to us - and whether we might be better, or worse, for knowing that truth. Considering Bob Hainey's lifestyle, what Michael learned about his father is not really all that surprising. The big surprise is how those around him react to both his search for the truth and what he finally learns about his father.

This book was not quite what I expected after skimming a couple of reviews; I think it was even better.

Michael Hainey's father, a Chicago newspaperman, died in 1970 when the younger Hainey was six years old and his brother two years older. Little was said about him after that, or about the manner of his death -- just that he had had a heart attack at 35. As Michael grew up and became a journalist himself, various parts of the story did not add up. When he reached the age at which his father had died, he began to investigate in earnest, After many difficulties, he learned the truth -- or rather, many truths.

After Visiting Friends kept me fascinated from beginning to end. It's not only the story of a great family history investigation, but a meditation on fathers and sons, and the larger topic of family. With side trips to Nebraska and California, it's also a great Chicago story. Very highly recommended.

The idea behind After Visiting Friends is compelling: Hainey, the son of a newspaper man and a journalist himself, launches an investigation into the circumstances of his father's death after noticing inconsistencies in the story.

He talks to surviving relatives, friends of the family, and his father's coworkers, and takes a few trips to flesh out the story. While describing the steps he took to find out more about his father's death, he also recounts personal memories and family history.

The secrets he uncovers throughout his journey to find the truth are not spy novel material, and the investigation is a low-key, meandering affair, but the story overall is an interesting window into the sixties- and seventies-era newspaper world, and it's a good read.

Hainey does have a style that takes a little while to get used to -- short bursts of words, fragments, brief sentences tapped out between longer sentences -- so After Visiting Friends was a slow starter for me. A few chapters in, I warmed up to it, and once that happened, I couldn't put the book down.


(three-and-a-half stars)

Thirty-five year old Robert Hainey died of an aneurysm on a street in Chicago in 1970, leaving a wife and two sons, eight and six. Michael Hainey was the six year old, and as he grew older, he became more and more curious about the circumstances surrounding his father's death. Michael is a journalist, just as his father was, and he begins an investigation into what really happened that night. Using journalistic techniques, and struggling to break down the walls built up by his father's friends on the Sun-Times, he finds his answers, and learns a little more about his family in the bargain.

This was a great story, and curiosity kept me reading. But I deducted a full star, because there were too many partial sentences, and I find that extremely distracting in a book. I would recommend it for the story, but be forewarned if that sort of thing bothers you.½

This book greatly disappointed me. It is about a journalist who finds inconsistencies in the reports of his father's death, which occurred when he was still a child. You have to wade through a lot of irrelevant details while following his journey to discover what happened, and so I hoped it was worth the wade. It was not. How could anyone take the fact that his father died while with his mistress and find this an interesting story? It's beyond me. This might have made a nice piece for the back of the NYT Sunday magazine, but the story didn't deserve to be expanded into a book. Sorry early reviewers, I can't agree with you on this one.

I enjoyed this book about a son's journey to learn about his father's death. It was encouraging to see how open his father's friends and family were to sharing stories about his father, even those who were not willing to talk about his death. Since Hainey was so young when his father passed away it is brave how he goes about learning about the person he never really knew. This is a good book about the complicated relationships within a family.½