The Longest Trip Home

My mom and my brother read "The Longest Trip Home" by John Grogan. I wanted to avoid the book, but they convined me to read it. The memoir of Grogan's childhood in white suburban Detroit is extremely maudlin, nostalgic, and self-indulgent. There's a lot about Grogan's boyhood pranks with his friends, his discovery of girls and first romances, and his relationship with his parents. But I was interested since one of the themes of the book is Grogan's relationship with Roman Catholicism, how he broke away from the Catholic Church, and how his extremely Catholic (with a capital C) parents dealt with that. I enjoyed this aspect of the book since I was raised Catholic, but left that faith more than five years ago. Another part of the book that had merit was how Grogan dealt with his father's cancer and his mother's dementia. I found this aspect touching and well-done. Overall, though, it wasn't a favorite. 5 of 10.