Friendly Fire: A Fractured Memoir

by Paul Rousseau

Overview

“A powerful, gut-wrenching tale of pain, suffering, and recovery.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS

“Unique and haunting…. A mesmerizing and unforgettable meditation on a stranger-than-fiction tragedy.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY STARRED REVIEW

One month before his college graduation, Paul Rousseau is accidentally shot in the head by his roommate and best friend.

At some point in the course of Paul and Mark’s friendship, Mark acquired—legally and with required permits—five firearms. Those weapons lived with them in their college apartment. It was a non-issue for the two best friends. They were inseparable. They were twenty-two-year-old boys at the height of their college experience, unaware that everything was about to change forever.

The bullet ripped through two walls before it struck Paul’s skull. Mark had accidentally pulled the trigger while in the other room and—frightened for his own future—delayed getting treatment for Paul, who miraculously remained conscious the entire time. In vivid detail, and balanced with refreshing moments of humor, Friendly Fire brings us into the world of both the shooting itself and its surgical counterpoint—the dark spaces of survival in the face of a traumatic brain injury and into the paranoid, isolating, dehumanizing maw of personal injury cases.

Friendly Fire is the story of a friendship—both its formation and its destruction. Through phenomenal writing and gripping detail, Paul reveals a compelling and inspirational story that speaks to much of contemporary American life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400247950
Publisher:	Harper Horizon
Publication date:	09/10/2024
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	167,902
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Paul Rousseau is a disabled writer with work in Roxane Gay’s The Audacity, Catapult, and elsewhere. You can find more of his work online at Paul-Rousseau.com.

Editorial Reviews

07/29/2024

Rousseau recounts how he survived a gunshot wound to the head in this unique and haunting account. In 2017, the author was in his on-campus apartment a month before college graduation, cleaning up a mess left by his roommate and best friend, Mark, when he felt “something” come at him through the wall, leaving him “blindsided, tackled into a pool of cough syrup.” That “something” was a bullet, accidentally fired by Mark from two rooms away. Afraid of the consequences, Mark didn’t call for help immediately, delaying critical care for Rousseau, who suffered a traumatic brain injury and severe PTSD. With punchy, insightful prose, Rousseau details the fallout, including the rift the incident caused between him and Mark, the financial challenges he faced as he tried to pay his medical bills, and the toll it all took on his psyche (“As my body has gotten better, my mind has gotten worse,” he tells his physical therapist). Certain details are infuriating, including Mark’s insurance company employing hack doctors to squash Rousseau’s personal injury claim; others are unsettling, including Rousseau’s assertion that the ordeal turned him into “a rabid brute whose sole intention is to destroy.” The result is a mesmerizing and unforgettable meditation on a stranger-than-fiction tragedy. Agent: Michele Mortimer, Darhansoff & Verrill Literary. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

'This book is powerful, surprising, moving—and impossible to put down.'

author of Gloria Patri AUSTIN ROSS

''The words are simple,' writes Rousseau, 'I got shot in the head by my best friend at school.' But this story is anything but simple: a shattered life, broken friendship, long recovery and loss of self. Rousseau writes this vivid, startling memoir the only way he can: fractured. And in that structure there is so much beauty, so much bravery, and so much stubborn elegance—this is a gorgeous book that cuts to the bones of American life and a terrible injury.'

author of And I Do Not Forgive You AMBER SPARKS

'Paul Rousseau's debut memoir, Friendly Fire, feels like a shot across the memoir bow. Told in fractures, there's no meandering exposition, just an unflinching, rapid-fire account of a polarizing event—and what happens next. This is memoir writing at its best. Thoughtful. Vulnerable. Palpable. Empathetic. Hopeful.'

—SMOKELONG QUARTERLY

'One of the most riveting memoirs I've read in years, Friendly Fire unfolds with urgency and so much heart, and the magic lies in how effortlessly Paul Rousseau tells this wrenching story. This is a big-time debut from a big-time talent.'

author of Blind Man’s Bluff JAMES TATE HILL

2024-07-17
Unsettling, episodic memoir exploring a young man’s bout with traumatic brain injury.

On April 7, 2017, just before graduation, college student Paul Rousseau’s life changed dramatically and terribly. In their college room he was accidentally shot in the head by Mark, his best friend and roommate, who possessed way too many guns. The pistol’s bullet pierced two walls, ricocheting off Paul’s head. What happened afterward is debut author Rousseau’s story, written in short spurts as a “buffer” against his traumatic brain injury. Told in sharp, clean prose, with a hard-earned sense of humor, his memoir proceeds in brisk chapters that alternate between those about the accident and aftermath and those about his life, his girlfriend Anna, and his devotion to the Timberwolves basketball team. The bullet drove bone fragments into his brain. In the hospital, facing a craniotomy, he thinks, “I am only just beginning to understand the irreversibility of what happened, the unknown of what’s to come.” He describes his brain as a “supercomputer disguised as ground beef molded into a fist”; during the operation “the surgeon picks debris out of my head like weeds in a garden.” When he’s tested after surgery, “I don’t know the desired outcome. Is it a pass-fail exercise?” He worries about everything, is confused, stutters, and experiences memory loss and brain headaches; his prefrontal cortex is irreparably damaged. Two months later, he graduates. Rousseau narrates his ensuing navigation of the legal issues that arose over his suit against Mark, who took two precious hours before calling for help; expensive insurance bills; frustrating personal injury litigation forms; and therapy sessions. The author does a fine job discussing his challenges and how he overcame them. “Metaphorically,” he writes, “everyone gets shot in the head.…It was my challenge, my duty to heal.”

A powerful, gut-wrenching tale of pain, suffering, and recovery.

Kirkus Reviews