Beautiful Boy by David Shelf

Beautiful Boy by David Sheff 1. Sheff intrigued me with his story just by the back of the book. The entire story is about his eldest son, Nic, who is an amazing student as a child; however, his childhood begins to fade when he gets into the life of drugs and alcohol. The experiences and hardships that the author goes through is very emotional which really kept me reading. 2. The setting affects the author and his story. The book takes place in modern day times as in 2008. This impacts the author and his experiences because this is the time where drugs became more known and they were easy to get which made it harder for Nic, David Sheff’s son, to stop the drug abuse. 3. The themes in this book are patience and faith. David must be patient towards the recovery of his son’s drug addiction. He knows that this process cannot happen over-night no matter how hard he wishes it could be that easy. He waits patiently for Nic to get better. Nic, however, goes through rough patches while on this journey to succession, but his father always has faith in him. I think that David and Nic’s experiences were incredibly traumatic. Sheff felt the pain that his son went through while being an addict and felt the need to share it with others. Another reason Sheff might have wanted to share this experience is because he wanted to show the difficulty and how bad it is to take drugs. 4. “When Nic was growing up, I thought I would be content with whatever choices he made in his life… Now I live with the knowledge that, never mind the most modest definition of a normal or healthy life, my son may not make it to twenty-one”(195-196). This proves the understanding that David has over his son’s life and that even though he believed at one point that Nic’s decisions will be made by himself, Nic has not made all the right decisions. This proved to David that his son needs guidance through out his whole life because once you are a father you are always a father. I chose this