Welcome To The Official Website Of Nick Hoffman
Featured books
Interview on Talking Books with JT Crowley
Radio Interview – KFAB
Reviews
He Was There All the Time:
BLUEINK:
Readers of a certain age will immediately access their own similar memories, allowing themselves to be swept along in the agreeable stream of the past. Hoffman is a natural storyteller, and there’s always a market for richly-told memories. His book is a pleasant diversion overall.
Proselythizing aside, readers seeking a nostalgic trip back in time will find much to enjoy in Hoffman’s well-told tales.
CLARION:
More distinguishing are those passages that attend to Hoffman’s relationship with his father, which is represented with clarity during trips back to his rehabilitation facility. These passages are juxtaposed with stories about other father figures from Hoffman’s life, including factory workers, judges and priests, who – at the golf course, the newspaper, and over coffee – helped him define his values. Such snapshots of individual lives are the book’s most compelling assets.
In the elegiac memoir He Was There All the Time, a man expresses gratitude for the village that raised him.
KIRKUS:
The author reflects on topics including his love of golf, his struggles with alcoholism, his college years spent at Penn State and his childhood in a family of twice-divorced parents. (“The net result,” he writes with characteristic humor, “is a family tree with a lot of branches.”) A key theme of the book is the centrality of religion to both Hoffman personally and to the area he calls home – Catholic clergymen make significant appearances in columns, and Christian prayers, Bible verses and poems are referenced throughout. Hoffman’s love for both family and community come through on nearly every page … “
Earnest, mostly lighthearted takes on life in rural America.
Play It As It Lies
BLUEINK:
Anyone who has dealt with the debility of an aging parent will relate to Hoffman’s experience watching his father’s health and mental capacity deteriorate. “He was slipping away,” Hoffman writes. “His short-term memory was fading fast but he could still tell me about the swimming hole on Walburn Run from his childhood two or three times in the same conversation and not change a word.”
Hoffman was a journalist most of his life. His writing is clear, sometimes even poetic. Relating his father’s eventual passing, he writes: “The circle was complete. I stood beside the man who had ushered me into life and added immeasurable meaning and value to it as he was ushered out. Any other thoughts I had slipped away like fireflies on a warm June night.”
CLARION REVIEW:
Evincing a clear commitment to documenting the process of sickness and aging, the text does an able job of presenting illness as an evolving condition that reshapes a family’s daily lives, relationships, and perspectives. Moments of humor, fear, and routine coexist, resulting in a textured account of caregiving and reflection. Hoffman’s and his father’s interpretations of adversity are well pronounced, and the book’s themes are developed with care, including its recurring motifs of time, faith and persistence.
Play It As It Lies is an intimate memoir about illness, memory and family devotion.
KIRKUS:
Kenneth would eventually die in 2023 and this work – stitched together from memories, journal entries, letters and saved voicemails – serves as a memorial from a son to his father. A seasoned storyteller, Hoffman engagingly recounts his relationship with Kenneth through a series of anecdotal vignettes that detail his father’s medical journey in his final years, which are poignantly intertwined with tales from their experiences together. While not an overly religious work, the volume reflects Hoffman’s Christian faith, with hymns, Catholic prayers, Bible verses, and poetry making occasional appearances alongside pop-culture references to his father’s favorite television shows and lyrics to classic rock songs. Though unabashedly, nostalgic, the memoir is rarely mawkish; the author is unafraid to honestly tackle difficult moments in both his and his father’s life.
A touching tribute from a son to his father.
