A couple of blokes on a US military forum who are, I guess, Jewish and have just been called up inside Israel are claiming that some quite horrific things have been done by Hamas. It has been reported in the mainstream media that Hamas killed whole families, including infants. These fellows are claiming that the bodies, including the babies were pretty nastily mutilated. Gripping… A story about the difference between the person we present to the world and the person we really are. It’s the gap between those two versions of ourselves that Wallace mines in this warts-and-all love letter to male friendship.”— Atlanta Journal-Constitution Representing another’s life is a daunting task, especially when it is someone we have loved and admired and once wanted to become and that person chooses to end their life, the very life we have emulated. It is this tension between idealization and betrayal that Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish and other novels, captures in This Isn’t Going to End Well: The True Story of a Man I Thought I Knew, his first nonfiction work. In THIS ISN’T GOING TO END WELL, Daniel Wallace (BIG FISH) scours his memory, letters, and William’s journal to make sense of something senseless, in the process learning about parts of William that were secreted under layers of defenses. The result is a searing, beautiful memoir about the author and the larger-than-life character who influenced him so greatly. It’s a vulnerable and revealing portrait of male friendship and the complicated mix of grief and anger that coexist after a loved one dies by suicide. So what next? Two factors make this situation impossible to resolve without a complete capitulation by one side: water and religion. While the one is essential and scarce and the other is behind all policy, nothing will or even can change. And so what?

A revelatory and reflective tale about how males perceive others and how they present themselves. More than anything, I felt compassion for their vulnerability and fear, and made me realize perhaps we are not so different, men and women, after all.”— Sandra Cisneros, author of Martita, I Remember You From the Publisher similar was attempted in the north with the soft touch given to iplo to cause division in Belfast nationlist communities,just as sensitive peace negotiations beginning to blossom,but the Adams and co seen straight through it and put a stop to it)But when William took his own life at age 48, Daniel was left first grieving, and then furious with the man who broke his and his sister’s hearts. That anger led him to commit a grievous act of his own, a betrayal that took him down a dark path into the tortured recesses of William’s past. Eventually, a new picture of William emerged, of a man with too many secrets and too much shame to bear.

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly says that calls for a ceasefire “aren’t going to help the situation”.

Reading through his brother-in-law’s papers helps Wallace crystalize both his admiration of the self that Nealy chose to show the world and his bewilderment over the one Nealy hid. Wallace recalls how much he admired Nealy’s handwriting and had tried to mimic it. “I copied him, but not syntactically, or in his style, the way I would later try to copy Carver or Malamud or Cheever: I wanted to write with the literal shapes of the letters he made.” But beneath the letters, Nealy’s “shadow life” emerges. He sees how Nealy was drawn “inescapably inward, and there was almost nothing good for him to see in there,” making his suicide seem like almost an inevitable conclusion. “[T]he question isn’t why he killed himself,” Wallace reflects. “The question is why did it take him so long? His journals must be the longest suicide note in the history of the world.” A memoir wrapped in an elegy… [that] maps a strangely stunning life… [Wallace] imbues this chronicle with tremendous compassion — for William, for everyone. This Isn’t Going to End Well gives off the particular radiance of a life lived hard, whatever as such, a brand of American bildungsroman. There’s deep satisfaction to its arc, despite its inherent sadness — a wondrous glimpse of the melding, in human doings, of fate, character and serendipity.”― Washington Post There’s a moment halfway through “This Isn’t Going to End Well: The True Story of a Man I Thought I Knew” when the author, Daniel Wallace, ponders how, a few centuries ago, society viewed suicide as a criminal act, a murder of the self. The dead person’s body might therefore be hanged, burned or dragged through the street as punishment.

Add to that the fact I know people here and elsewhere who, if the situation really demanded it, would be on the next plane to Israel - and not all of them are Jewish. No idea how many there are globally who would do the same, but I'd be surprised if it was much less that 100k in total, probably many more. Negociate peace and treat the Palestinians as equals to begin with,and work from there,but after decades of dehumanising them,this may be an impossible sell to the Israeli public ... The man was unbelievably cool, standing on the roof about to jump into the Wallace family’s swimming pool. Such an act was dangerous, forbidden, but utterly breathtaking. Later, Daniel learned he was William Nealy, his older sister’s latest boyfriend. Novelist Wallace’s first work of nonfiction examines his deep connection to illustrator and outdoor adventurer William Nealy (1953-2001), who was also the author’s brother-in-law and an intimate friend and mentor. Wallace was a teenager when he first met Nealy, who had just recently begun dating his sister, Holly. They would eventually marry, and they remained mutually supportive through Holly’s struggles with debilitating arthritis and Nealy’s bouts with depression, until his death at age 48. Wallace traces their enduring friendship and the many escapades they shared together, from fishing expeditions to illicit drug runs across state lines, and he deftly reveals Nealy’s expansive range of interests and accomplishments. He was also a kind of MacGyver, continually building and fixing just about anything. More significantly, the author relates how Nealy’s gregarious and adventurous approach to living influenced his own life and eventual career as a writer. “He was the one who would give me the idea for the life I ended up living, even if what I ended up doing was nothing like him or what he did,” writes Wallace. “He showed me how it was done: experience, imagine, then create. Every book I’ve written is dedicated to him in invisible ink. I doubt I would have written a one of them without him, or that I ever would have considered being an artist at all.” Though there were signs of Nealy’s mental struggles in the final years leading up to his death, it wasn’t until several years later, as Wallace reluctantly read through Nealy’s private journals, that the long-standing severity of his condition became fully evident, bringing into question much of what he thought he knew about the man. “There were three or four copies of his suicide notes there as well,” writes Wallace. “His driving license, his passport. My heart felt as if it were floating in my chest.”

This brilliantly layered book is about what calls us to write, create, dance and even destroy those we love. What began as Daniel Wallace’s story became my story, too – the writer who lives “in that place between experience and understanding” and is compelled to touch bone regardless of the pain. I love this book. This Isn’t Going to End Well ended too soon -- and like all great ghost stories I want to read it again.” A memoir wrapped in an elegy… [that] maps a strangely stunning life… [Wallace] imbues this chronicle with tremendous compassion — for William, for everyone. This Isn’t Going to End Well gives off the particular radiance of a life lived hard, whatever else: as such, a brand of American bildungsroman. There’s deep satisfaction to its arc, despite its inherent sadness — a wondrous glimpse of the melding, in human doings, of fate, character and serendipity.”― Washington Post The writing drifts in time and place, but not in a disruptive way. By interweaving Wallace’s reflection with incidents from their past, Wallace shows how Nealy’s rash decisions and occasional obsessions come to make sense. Each chapter contains one or more of Nealy’s graphics, often wryly humorous, instilling a bit of comic relief into an otherwise somber and gripping narrative. Though Wallace shows his anger and pain, the memoir is sensitively and respectfully compiled. If there is to be a Jewish state, and if I was Jewish I'd sure as hell want one, somewhere, it's hard to know where else it could or should be. Historically there was talk of a territory being given to found such a state in the American West, in the highlands of British East Africa etc. etc. and, obviously, none of those came to pass. That was in part due to practical reasons, but overwhelmingly because of the religious tie to the Levant.