Book Review Thirty Rooms to Hide In: Insanity, Addiction and Rock ”˜n”™ Roll in the Shadow of the Mayo Clinic

By DWIGHT HOBBES

Luke Longstreet Sullivan”™s memoir, Thirty Rooms to Hide In: Insanity, Addiction and Rock ”˜n”™ Roll in the Shadow of the Mayo Clinic (University of Minnesota Press), brilliantly written, does not make for particularly pleasant reading. In fact, it”™s the kind of the experience, especially being a true story, that, beyond depressing, can make you get up on a grey, drizzling morning, look out the window think about slitting your throat. Sullivan, in this wholly engaging, wryly irreverent, cynically bittersweet account of tragic trials and tribulations, recounts how helplessly he, his five brothers and their mom suffered through years of being ruthlessly abused by dad and husband, a raging drunk whose binges eventually, one might say thankfully, saw him out of their lives and into his grave.

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