Arjun and the Good Snake, by Rick Harsch

This is a memoir about alcoholism and venom, all things Indian and some things half, for instance, the author’s son. Rick Harsch is a writer living on the coast of Izola where great wine is cheap and suicide is on his brain. He determines on a trip to stay with his Indian wife’s family in Chennai, India, that he will stay dry, spend his six weeks writing, searching for snakes, carving coconut masks with his son, and veering about Chennai. The book refuses to spare the author as it ranges from gruesome confessional to architectural analysis, the humor of his relationship with his son, his rage against forces he sees arrayed against him, at times quite misguidedly so.