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Addiction Without An Ending In 'Beautiful Boy'

Linda Holmes

Based on the memoirs of a young man suffering from addiction and his worried father, the film stars Timothée Chalamet (left) as Nic Sheff and Steve Carell as David Sheff. Francois Duhamel/Amazon Studios hide caption

Based on the memoirs of a young man suffering from addiction and his worried father, the film stars Timothée Chalamet (left) as Nic Sheff and Steve Carell as David Sheff.

What if you were trapped in the middle of a traditional addiction narrative forever?

In a traditional fictional addiction narrative, the person with the addiction begins the story able to coexist with it, if indeed it even has emerged. The addiction deepens, loved ones discover it and there is a single lowest point. Then there is a surrender by the person suffering and a willingness to get help. Or, sometimes, there is not, or there is another fall and then there is death.

But the new film Beautiful Boy, based on the memoirs of journalist David Sheff and his son, Nic, follows a different path — almost a path without a path. What it is about, what it is concerned with, is not the way addiction is lived through , but the way addiction is lived beside , by the person suffering and by the family.

Steve Carell plays David, a loving father we meet as he searches for Nic, whose battles with drugs — crystal meth in particular — already have been an issue for some time. Nic, played with both charm and a maddening slipperiness by Timothée Chalamet, comes and goes from the house, terrifying his father and stepmother Karen (the reliably terrific Maura Tierney) and complicating their parenting of Nic's younger brother and sister. Director Felix Van Groeningen assembles the film in a way that recalls Jean-Marc Vallée's work on films such as Wild and TV projects such as Sharp Objects : Memory is nonlinear, so the story is too.

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A father tells the story of his son's struggle to stay 'clean'.

We see David's early, optimistic, research-driven efforts to treat Nic with a single visit to rehab. We glance Nic's periods of sobriety and the things that threatened them. We realize the strain on David and Karen's marriage that comes from the fact that Karen deals (and her kids deal) with much of the fallout from Nic's behavior, but Karen recognizes the primacy of Nic's mother (Amy Ryan), who is still very much present in his life. Karen's options are limited, and her pain is enormous.

Chalamet uses his particular brand of good-kid charisma very wisely in this film; for much of it, Nic is lovable but not likable. The intensity of his desire to be loved is obvious, but over and over again he manipulates his father by making promises he himself may even believe he intends to keep. And Carell, after taking on flashier roles in films such as Foxcatcher and Battle of the Sexes , here does well as a conflicted and devoted father who gives up large parts of his life to prevent his son's death. David never seems foolish for persevering with Nic, even when he beats himself up over his choices of strategy.

The scenes in which Nic asks for one more chance are wrenching. So often, an addiction story will make the plea facially fraudulent or the right answer too clear, but Beautiful Boy is honest about the fact that David has no good options; whatever he does could turn out to be a great regret.

There are times when, unfortunately, the filmmaking doesn't trust the good performances from Carell and Chalamet to carry the story. One on-the-nose music cue, in particular, skids right past moving to maudlin to kind of embarrassing, to the point where it injects a note of unintentional comedy. And Carell is better when he's controlled than when David is angry — although honestly, it might be that even his anger in dramatic scenes calls to mind his work as Michael Scott on The Office , who was so frequently impotently enraged to such great comedic effect.

Addiction has long been a topic that films and television could not look away from. But very often they attempt to build dramatic tension over the binary question of whether the person will or will not be saved. Will there be a visit to rehab and then a moment of hope? Will there be a disaster? Such stories view loving someone with an addiction as a process of trying to help them push a rock up and over a hill, such that the recovery is complete.

While there may be true experiences that go that way, Beautiful Boy presents the question: What if the story just remains in the middle forever? What if committing to loving them doesn't mean committing to love them until the battle with addiction is over, however long it takes — but committing to love them even though it never will be entirely over? Not only in the "they will always be in recovery and they will always need support" sense, but in that a problem once "kicked" may yet again stand up and kick back?

Nic Sheff relapsed after he wrote about his addiction; after his father wrote about it; after they went on a book tour. There are ways to tell this story that would have been dishonest; ways that would have made it really seem unlikely by the end that such a thing could happen, or would have left the story such that a relapse would make it seem false. This film will make you believe Nic could relapse again (and again), but it will also make you believe that if David has to show up for Nic for another 30 years, he will.

Beautiful Boy

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Summary and Study Guide

Published in 2008, David Sheff’s memoir , Beautiful Boy , explores his experiences of coming to terms with his son’s addiction to methamphetamine. Sheff and his wife Vicki are overjoyed when they have their son, Nic. For the first three years, they live a happy, contented life, providing Nic with everything he needs. However, when Sheff and Vicki's marriage collapses, Nic, now aged three, is deeply affected by the change. This worsens when Sheff and Vicki move further apart—Nic has to travel between their homes, living with Sheff and visiting Vicki on holidays. 

Although Sheff sees his divorce as a possible contributing factor in Nic’s later drug addiction, Nic is largely a happy child. Intelligent and creative, he is occasionally prone to depression but remains passionate and charismatic. When he enters his teens, a new, surlier, more withdrawn side of Nic emerges. Sheff is concerned when he finds a bag of marijuana among Nic’s belongings. However, Nic seems to put the incident behind him, exceling at school, winning awards for his writing, and joining the swim and water polo teams. 

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Nic looks unwell when he returns from a summer trip to Paris. A doctor diagnoses with a stomach ulcer. Although Nic recovers, he is changed, becoming increasingly sullen and secretive. He drops out of the swim team and water-polo team, stops working on the school newspaper, and begins cutting classes. It soon becomes clear that Nic is using a variety of drugs and that this drug abuse is escalating into full-blown addiction. Sheff is unable to control Nic and unsure of how to proceed. Things come to a head when Nic disappears for several days, eventually calling Sheff to report that he has fallen into a bad state taking methamphetamine. 

Despite his insistence that he is not an addict, Nic disappears again on further drug binges. At his parents’ insistence, he enters rehab but relapses again. The next few years of his life are defined by time in rehab, often relatively long periods of recovery , and then relapses. This places a serious strain on his relationships with Sheff, Sheff’s wife Karen , and Sheff and Karen’s children, Jasper and Daisy . As Nic steals, lies, and continues to abuse their trust, their lives come to revolve around Nic’s troubles as he alternates between throwing himself into addiction and striving to get clean.

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Paralleling Nic’s own struggles are Sheff’s difficulties coming to terms with his son’s addiction. He spends a lot of time in denial , refusing to accept the scale of Nic’s problems, drawing on stereotypes of addicts to convince himself that Nic is not like other people with substance abuse problems. He also blames himself for Nic’s addiction. He looks at his divorce, his own history of drug abuse, and his initially lenient attitude to Nic’s drug use. He struggles to accept that his efforts to support Nic only enable his ongoing drug abuse and that he is powerless to help his son. Ultimately, Sheff must confront his own codependency—his addiction to his son’s addiction—as Nic’s decisions dictate Sheff’s life and happiness. 

As Nic struggles to stay in recovery, relapsing and returning to rehab, Sheff slowly learns to let go—accepting that he cannot save Nic and that attempting to do so will only damage himself and the rest of the family. After Sheff suffers a brain hemorrhage, he realizes that Nic’s life will go on with or without him, so he must stop hurting himself and others by trying to take on his son’s recovery. Sheff finds himself in a place where he still hopes that Nic stays sober, but he no longer centers his entire life around his son’s struggles, a place of at least partial peace where he can finally detach and take things one day at a time.  

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Review: In ‘Beautiful Boy,’ a Writer Confronts His Son’s Meth Addiction

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‘Beautiful Boy’ | Anatomy of a Scene

Felix van groeningen narrates a sequence from his film featuring timothée chalamet and steve carell..

My name is Felix Van Groeningen and I am the director of Beautiful Boy. In this scene we see Steve Carell playing the father, David, and Timothée Chalamet playing the son, Nic, meet up. They haven’t seen each other in a while. Nick is living on the streets doing drugs, and agreed to meet with his father to sit down and talk. The father wants to reason with him to try and get him to come home. “This is so weird, this place.” “So how you doing?” “I’m doing great, you know, just doing what needs to be done.” “What does that mean?” “Just being responsible for myself, and I’ve quit on my own. You know, so I’ve got five days now. I feel like I’m doing well but I just need a few hundred bucks, though.” “Nic, I can’t give you any money.” What I find so fascinating in this scene is how many twists and turns there are. They both come in with an agenda. David has a preconceived idea of how he wants to deal with this situation, which is not to criticize his son, yet the fact that he can’t reach him, that he feels that his son is playing him makes him do things he doesn’t want to and then it becomes this incredible tennis match where we see these two actors really on the top of their game. We rehearsed this scene many times in the lead up to the shoot of this. It’s a massive scene, and we played it out every time in one go, and we shot it with two cameras in order to be able to capture the energy between them. Often we had Steve’s character David like, be a little bit lower or behind something or be in a frame that’s a little bit too wide, so he felt a little bit lost or a bit off, and here too that’s why we have this low angle and like you see the corner of the table, like, cornering him a bit. “Oh. it doesn’t look like it’s working out, so what then, therapy, huh?” “You can come home.” “No.” “We would make it work. Please.” Timothée is, I think, an incredibly talented actor. What makes him so great for this movie is his fearlessness. He will take on anything and he will just go 200% and 300% and when he hits it right, he just blows you away. “You think that you have this under control, and I understand how scared you are.” “I understand why I do things. It doesn’t make me any different, all right? I’m attracted to craziness, and you’re just embarrassed because I was like, you know, I was like this amazing thing, like your special creation or something, and you don’t like who I am now.” “Yeah, who are you, Nic?” “This is me, dad, here. This is who I am.” You see them trying to connect but they both realize that it’s not working anymore, so it’s very sad because of that. “You don’t like what you see?”

By A.O. Scott

• Oct. 11, 2018

The question that tears at David Sheff, a magazine writer living in Marin County, outside San Francisco, is “Why?” Why did his oldest son, Nic, a charming and thoughtful young man who loved drawing, writing, reading and surfing, slide into drug addiction? It’s something many parents in David’s position ask, even as they despair of a satisfying answer. Nic tells his father that crystal meth filled a void in his life. The first time he consumed it, he says, his world went “from black and white to Technicolor,” and he’s reluctant to go back. More than anything, David wants him back.

“Beautiful Boy,” directed by Felix Van Groeningen (“The Broken Circle Breakdown”) is based on paired memoirs by the real David and Nic Sheff, who are played onscreen by Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet. The film tilts a bit more toward the parental perspective, emphasizing David’s pain and bafflement. But it also incorporates some of his son’s literary sensibility, and conveys the bliss of being high along with the desperation of dependency. We don’t really learn why Nic became addicted, but we do get a sense of what it was like for him and his family to struggle with his disease.

Stories like this tend to vary in setting and details, but also to conform to a certain pattern. Van Groeningen, who wrote the script with Luke Davies, arranges the narrative in chronological curlicues, looping back and forth in time and relying heavily on extended, music-driven montages. The digressions and flashbacks rest on a familiar sequence: a crisis is followed by an attempt at sobriety and, usually, a relapse.

The governing moods are grief, guilt, anxiety and what David calls “psychological terror.” Nic is skilled at lying and emotional manipulation. He cannibalizes love and undermines trust, and allows glimmers of his smart, charming self to peak through at strategic moments. David swerves from denial to guarded optimism to exasperation, veering into rage and despair. His wife, Karen (Maura Tierney), Nic’s stepmother, tries to be supportive. Nic’s mother, Vicki (Amy Ryan), who lives in Los Angeles, does what she can to help, though she and David often find themselves quarreling about what to do and who is at fault.

It is hard not to be touched by the testing of paternal love, or by Nic’s fragility. But “Beautiful Boy,” rather than plumbing the hard emotional depths of its subject, skates on a surface of sentiment and gauzy visual beauty. There is a lot of good music — John Lennon, Sigur Ros, Perry Como — and California vistas so gorgeous that you might wonder if the state’s tourist board had a role in the production. (The cinematographer is Ruben Impens.) But the picturesqueness and the flowing, music-video rhythms of the editing give the film a slick, evasive feel, as if it were too cautious or too cool to confront the worst of what it’s about.

The main performances are similarly coy, as if the actors were protecting the characters from our scrutiny rather than opening them up. Neither Carell nor Chalamet risks losing the audience’s sympathy, which means that neither one fully earns it. The movie almost defensively insists on propositions we had no reason to doubt. Nic is a good kid. David is a good dad. Meth is a terrible, seductive drug.

“Beautiful Boy” is not a bad movie. It was made with earnest care and honorable intentions, and concludes with a recitation of one of Charles Bukowski’s best poems. But as much as it may want to illuminate the realities of addiction, it mystifies David and Nic’s experiences, leaving too many questions — how and what as well as why — swirling in the air.

Beautiful Boy Rated R. Sniffing, smoking, shooting. Running time: 2 hours.

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Beautiful Boy (2018)

At what age did nic sheff become an addict.

In researching the Beautiful Boy true story, we learned that Nic's life of addiction began with vodka when he was 11. A year later, he was smoking marijuana, which turned into a daily habit by middle school. He was soon experimenting with drugs like acid, ecstasy, mushrooms and cocaine. At the age of 18, he tried crystal meth. It made him feel like he could achieve anything. "I felt like a rock star," Nic says of the first time he used it. However, his feeling of euphoria didn't last long. As the fix wore off, the good feelings evaporated and his body writhed in agony. To keep the good feelings alive, he became an habitual user. He did everything he could to avoid crashing. As a result, the addiction consumed his life and directly affected the lives of his family members. The movie does a good job depicting this. -Oprah.com The real David Sheff with his son Nic Sheff in the late 1980s.

What led Nic Sheff to become a drug addict?

Nic's parents, both journalists, divorced when he was 4 years old. He ended up splitting his time between his mother, Vicki, in Los Angeles and his dad in San Francisco. On the surface, he seemed to handle it fine. He got good grades and was captain of the water polo team. However, the emotions he was bottling up couldn't stay suppressed forever. "The world was really abrasive and overwhelming, and I felt really hopeless. When I started drinking [alcohol], I couldn't stop," Nic says of his first foray into addiction at age 11. -Oprah.com "I mean, I'd always felt so, you know, ugly and weak and pathetic," says Nic. "I felt sick and defective. I felt like there was something deeply wrong with me. I hated myself. I hated having to live with myself. At first getting high seemed like the only thing that could ever make me feel any different." "Every time I did a shot, I truly felt like it was gonna be the shot that finally fixed everything for me. I thought if I could only do enough of whatever drug it was, I would eventually feel whole—no longer like the alien. ...the more drugs I shot in me, and the more sex for money I had, the more f**king depressed and suicidal and crazy I became. Because it wasn't working. I knew it wasn't working. But I kept trying and trying. I didn't know what else to do." -The Fix

Did Nic really keep journals throughout his life?

Yes. Like in the Beautiful Boy movie, the real Nic Sheff kept journals. He used them as a resource when writing his bestselling memoir Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines , which chronicles his experiences as a teenager addicted to drugs. Both Tweak and Nic's father's book Beautiful Boy provided the basis for the movie.  -Oprah.com Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff is one of two books on which the movie is based. The other was written by Nic's father and is featured below.

Were Nic's parents really at first in denial about his addiction?

Yes. "I kind of think we parents are wired for denial because to see the trouble that our child is in is so painful. It's so terrifying," said Nic's father David Sheff. "I would hear the good things; I'd see the good things. I'd block out the terrifying course that we were on until it was impossible to deny anymore." Despite a significant number of absences from school, teachers and counselors weren't overly concerned, with one saying that college would straighten Nic out. They noted his good grades and large number of friends. At first, David kept his son's addiction hidden from family and friends, not wanting them to think badly of his son and how it reflected on him as a parent. -Oprah.com

Did Nic really get into the colleges he applied to?

Yes. Even by his senior year, drugs hadn't had a severe effect on Nic's academics. Like in the Beautiful Boy movie, the true story confirms that he got into the colleges he applied to but first ended up in rehab instead. When he made it to the University of California, Berkeley, he dropped out during his freshman year. -Oprah.com

Did Nic Sheff's dad, David Sheff, ever use drugs?

Yes. "When this hit our family, we were like so many families in this country," David Sheff says. "I was not naive about drugs. I used drugs when I was a kid. ... But I still thought, like most of us, 'This could never happen to our family.' When it did, we were so blindsided. We were so devastated that I realized that this is something we have to talk about." That realization led David to write his book Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction , which was published in 2008 and became a #1 New York Times Best Seller. David says that he had shared and discussed his own history of drug use with his son, a decision that he questions today.  -Oprah.com The real David Sheff (left) admits to using drugs when he was younger, a fact that he shared with his son. Steve Carell as Sheff in the Beautiful Boy movie.

Was Nic's dad, David Sheff, really a well-known journalist?

Yes. David Sheff's lengthy experience as a journalist includes writing for Rolling Stone , The New York Times , Fortune , Wired and NPR. He has interviewed numerous famous subjects, including Steve Jobs, Carl Sagan, Frank Zappa, Jack Nicholson and John Lennon. In addition to penning the book Beautiful Boy on which the movie is based, he wrote the books All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono , China Dawn , and Game Over . As we researched the question, "How accurate is Beautiful Boy ?" we discovered that Nic's mother, Vicki, is also a respected journalist with her own impressive list of celebrity interviews that includes Billy Joel, Dennis Hopper and Eddie Van Halen.

Did David Sheff smoke a joint with his son Nic?

Yes. This comes straight from David's memoir Beautiful Boy . He said that making the decision to share a joint with his son is one that he still regrets. "It was not something I'm proud of," says David, going on to explain that he was just trying to find a way to connect with his son. -Oprah.com Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction by David Sheff is the second of two books that inspired the movie.

Did Nic's father, David Sheff, remarry and have two small children?

Yes. In the movie, Nic's second wife, Karen (portrayed by Maura Tierney), and their two small children, Jasper and Daisy, are all based on real people. Like in the film, they too suffered as David became obsessed with saving Nic. Jasper and Daisy idolized their older brother, who was their friend and playmate. They couldn't comprehend what he was doing to himself and how it was affecting the family. Nic knew that his drug use was destroying his family. He kept using in part to stop the guilt from sinking in.  -Oprah.com

Did Nic Sheff really run away from home and live on the street?

Yes. As years of drug abuse mounted, Nic eventually ran away from home. He lived on the street for some time, sold his body for cash, dealt drugs, and stole money from his family. -Oprah.com

Did the real Nic Sheff sell his body to other men for drug money?

Yes. Sheff, who is a straight man, says that he also did it to feel wanted and to find value in himself. "I mean, don’t get me wrong, I needed the money. But, more than anything else, I wanted to feel beautiful," says Sheff. "I could’ve made money in other ways. Prostitution was something I wanted to do. That sounds crazy f**ked up, but it’s true. And when I was out there, you know, hustling, I’m telling you, a lot of the kids I met were just like me. They wanted to feel like I wanted to feel. They wanted to feel wanted." "Of course, I’m straight, so I would’ve preferred to be wanted by women for sure. But, hell, I’d take what I could get. And men did seem to like me." Friends and family felt that he should leave the short period of time he spent prostituting himself in San Francisco and New York out of his 2007 book, Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines . It is not depicted in the movie.  -The Fix The real Nic Sheff (left) goes into more detail in his book Tweak with regard to the things he did for drug money, including selling his body.

Did Nic Sheff steal money from his seven-year-old brother?

Yes. He says that stealing money from his little brother's piggy bank in order to buy drugs is one of the lowest things he's ever done. "I would have practically done anything to anybody in order to keep getting it," says Nic. He also tried to steal a computer from his mother, Vicki. She found him in a paranoid state hiding in the ceiling rafters in the garage.  -The Fix

Did Nic Sheff overdose and end up in the ER?

Yes. With his body frail and ravaged by meth use, Nic overdosed and ended up in the ER. He says that he was too ashamed to call his father. "There was just this idea that I was just going to shoot drugs until I killed myself," says Nic. -Oprah.com

Did David Sheff really check morgues and hospitals to make sure his son hadn't overdosed?

David Sheff says that this indeed happened. For a period of time when his son was at his worst, David would check morgues and hospitals every couple days to see if Nic had died or overdosed. In the movie, Steve Carell's character calls hospitals in search of his son.

Did Nic Sheff almost lose an arm from an infected needle hole?

Yes. Though it's not shown in the film, the Beautiful Boy true story reveals that Nic almost lost his arm when an infected needle puncture grew to the size of a baseball. -The New York Times The real Nic Sheff (left) as a young man and actor Timothée Chalamet (right) as Sheff in the movie.

Did Nic Sheff go to rehab?

Yes. Fact-checking the Beautiful Boy movie reveals that Nic eventually agreed to seek help. At first, rehab helped him to recognize that he had a disease, despite still believing that he could control his drug and alcohol use. As in most cases, staying clean was hard to maintain. He relapsed multiple times, and as of 2009, had been through five rehabilitation programs. -Oprah.com

Did David Sheff suffer a brain hemorrhage?

Yes. As both David and Nic were working on their books, David suffered a brain hemorrhage, and his son, who had been off drugs for 18 months, relapsed. The hemorrhage affected David's brain in such a way that he had to relearn how to write. It is left out of the film.  -The New York Times

How did Nic Sheff finally turn his life around?

"How is it that, today, I actually don’t totally hate myself?" Nic said in an article he penned for  The Fix . "The only thing I can say is that I actually started listening and started doing what those counselors and psychiatrists and people in meetings were telling me to do. Hell, it was no big secret. They’d been prescribing me medication, telling me what outpatient groups to go to, what doctors to see, what steps to take. I just didn’t listen. I didn’t listen and I didn’t believe."

Does Nic's father David blame himself for Nic becoming involved with drugs?

David says he struggled with blame and has often thought about what he could have done differently to help his son. "I think I could have intervened sooner," he told The New York Times in 2008. "Before Nic turned 18, I could have forced him into a program. I could have dragged him in, and at least it would have gotten him off the streets." "I feel like...my dad did really the best he could, you know, and my mom did the best she could," said Nic, "and they really, really tried really hard, you know, and at a certain point, there was nothing that they could do. There was not one thing that they could do that was going to make me not go down the path that I went down." -Oprah The real David and Nic Sheff attend the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018 and discuss Beautiful Boy .

Where does the title "Beautiful Boy" come from?

The movie is based in part on David Sheff's book Beautiful Boy . The book title comes from the 1980 John Lennon song "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)." Sheff interviewed John Lennon and Yoko Ono in September 1980, roughly three months before Lennon's murder.

What happened to Nic Sheff after the publication of his book?

In addition to working on his second book, Nic was living in Savannah, Georgia with his girlfriend and working as a nude model at a local art school. In 2011, he married Jette Newell, a model, actress and television writer. "That's what I care about now," he said in an article he wrote for The Fix , "I want to provide for the people I love. I want to take care of my dogs and to have kids one day and all that." Nic's second book, titled We All Fall Down , was published in 2011 and focuses on his ongoing efforts to stay clean as he suffers relapses and is in and out of rehab centers. He has since gone on to write for the Netflix TV show 13 Reasons Why .

Explore the Beautiful Boy true story further by watching an interview with the real David Sheff and son Nic Sheff.

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BEAUTIFUL BOY

A father’s journey through his son’s meth addiction.

by David Sheff ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 7, 2007

A clear picture of what meth addiction does to a user and those who love him that may help other families better cope with...

“I’ll be fine. I’ve stopped using.” That lie is told again and again in this memoir of a father’s heartbreaking struggle with his son’s addiction to methamphetamines.

The clearly charming and talented Nic first tried marijuana in high school and subsequently went through a decade of using, rehabilitation and relapse. Expanding on a 2005 article in the New York Times Magazine, journalist Sheff ( China Dawn , 2002, etc.) takes readers along on the grim roller-coaster ride. While on drugs, Nic leads a life of self-destruction, deception and crime. He breaks into the family home to steal money; he lies about where he is and what he is doing; he asks for help but refuses the terms on which it is offered. The effect on Sheff’s family is devastating; trying to save his son and also protect his wife (not Nic’s mother) and their two young children, the author suffers a near-fatal brain hemorrhage. He applies his research skills to learn everything possible about methamphetamine, what it does to the brain and what treatments are available. The hard truth is that no one really knows what works best in dealing with meth addiction, or even what doesn’t work. He didn’t cause Nic’s addiction, Sheff comes to understand; he can’t control it and he can’t cure it. Eventually shifting his focus from Nic’s recovery to his own, the author goes into therapy to get past his obsession with his son’s problems. Whether Nic will recover remains an open question at the book’s end, which offers a glimmer of hope, but no promises and no easy answers.

Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2007

ISBN: 978-0-618-68335-2

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2007

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PSYCHOLOGY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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BOOK REVIEW

by David Sheff

by David Sheff & Nic Sheff

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY

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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen

by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal

by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel

THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US

by Reyna Grande ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 28, 2012

A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.

In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande ( Dancing with Butterflies , 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.

Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá?  Does my mama love me ?”

Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

More by Joshua Davis

by Joshua Davis ; adapted by Reyna Grande

edited by Reyna Grande & Sonia Guiñansaca

by Reyna Grande

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Beautiful Boy Essay Questions

By david sheff, essay questions.

These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own.

Written by people who wish to remain anonymous

What is the main theme in ‘Beautiful Boy’ by David Sheff?

The main theme in ‘Beautiful Boy’ is addiction and its consequences in society. Nic is a drug addict, and he started using drugs at an early age. Nic’s father, Sheff, has exhausted all his savings to help him recover from the addiction. Besides straining his family, Nic has interfered with his prospects. Therefore, drug addiction is a menace in society because it kills the dreams and aspirations of young people.

Is lack of knowledge paradoxical, according to David Sheff ?

Nic is depressed because of his drug addiction, and he believes that nobody understands his situation. The people around Nic misinterpret his addiction and conclude that it is his personal decision to follow the path. Paradoxically, lack of knowledge is the main cause why people are misjudging Nic. Drug addiction is not a path chosen by an individual but a circumstance that deprives one of making the right choices in life. Therefore drug addicts need to be shown love and support from the people around them to hasten their recovery from addiction.

How does the author use sight imagery in the book ‘ Beautiful Boy? ’

The author uses sight imagery to help readers understand the biased nature of human thinking and judgment. According to Nic, only girls wear tights that paint the female gender negatively. Consequently, human perception is biased, and judgment is not supposed to be based on an individual's physical appearance.

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Beautiful Boy Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Beautiful Boy is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Study Guide for Beautiful Boy

Beautiful Boy study guide contains a biography of Patricia Aakhus, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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Book Review: Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction by David Sheff

Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction is written by David Sheff. Sheff is a professional writer who lives in California with his second wife and three children. Nic is David’s son from his first marriage. The book begins by describing Nic’s upbringing and their life as a family. Nic is a creative and articulate young man with a zest for life and learning. When Nic begins to use drugs, the story follows the ups and downs of loving someone with an addiction.

Those who have experienced this in their life will relate to the myriad of emotions that Sheff experiences. At times in the book, I felt discouraged and frustrated with Nic for going back to using drugs again and again. As a witness to the stress and desperation the family feels I was skeptical of Nic's promises of recovery. The Sheff’s can provide Nic with access to many resources and chances at recovery but the struggle to overcome addiction transcends social class and privilege. Like most addicts, there is no end to the struggle with addiction and the author acknowledges that it will be a lifelong battle. Like his father, Nic is an author who wrote a book called Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines about his experiences. A movie with Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet was made based on Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction.

Check out Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction on Hoopla, Libby, or from your branch's shelves with your library card today!

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Critics’ Corner Book Review – Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction

Graphic Created by Isabelle Anderson

Fiona Joffroy, Senior , Staff Reporter April 24, 2019

Addiction is often seen as a disease of helplessness, not only for the person who is addicted but also for the lives of friends and loved ones of the person struggling with drug abuse. David Sheff, the author of autobiography Beautiful Boy, illustrates how his son, Nic’s, addiction to methamphetamines took over both of their lives.

A parent’s point of view allows the reader to empathize, through the lens of a father, the struggle of addiction. At the end of each chapter, Sheff questions himself: Why? Why won’t he stop? Why did I not get my son help sooner? What did I do to lose him? Sheff finds the answers to these questions in the community support he is able to find from others with the same struggle. Sheff attends AA meetings where people share their stories, and he is told: “you cannot cure this; this is not your fault.” In spite of this, though his son is addicted to dangerous substances, Sheff is addicted to finding an answer. This is one of the most powerful messages in the book. Most people suffer from the desire to want more, and disease is not caused by a lack of willpower, but rather by the neurobiological processes in the brain.

Sheff researches the reality of methamphetamine addiction, an addiction that plagues thousands of Americans and has a low sobriety success rate. He discovers that meth is one of the most addictive drugs because of its ability to deplete the brain of dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that alerts the brain of pleasure but also elicits the brain to repeat behaviors that cause pleasure. When one first takes meth, a large amount of dopamine is released in their brain creating a feeling of pleasure and, in order to replicate this feeling, users will have to take increasingly larger doses to create the feeling of pleasure they initially experienced. This is not the only discouraging piece of information Sheff finds: it may take up to two years for the nerve damage to be reversed in a meth user. Sheff describes his son’s addiction as an act of stealing, “An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie to you. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it.” Each time Sheff tries to help his son, he continues to hurt his father and himself.

While maintaining emotionally powerful prose, Sheff highlights the struggle of what it means to be addicted, and what it means to love someone wholeheartedly even if those feelings aren’t reciprocated. Though his son created chaos and stress in his life, Sheff consistently agreed to help him and stayed by his side. Sheff’s unconditional determination to help Nic is a truly heartwarming aspect of the book, as Sheff’s support for his son is ultimately what helps him recover and have the willpower to get better.

David Sheff’s memoir Beautiful Boy keeps the reader engaged from start to finish. It took me a mere 24 hours to finish. Not only does Sheff illustrate the importance and complexity of his relationship with his son Nic, who is crippled by drug dependency, but Sheff encourages the reader to stay hopeful. Beautiful Boy is a book that is relatable to any audience; it is about love and pain, and how to support the ones you love and find yourself in difficult times.

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Exploring family relationships and addiction in ‘beautiful boy’.

“Beautiful Boy” was produced by Amazon Studios and was originally a memoir written by David Sheff. The narrative is based on the true story of a young man’s struggle with drug addiction.

In the film, David Sheff is played by Steve Carrell and the son, Nicholas Sheff, is played by Timothée Chalamet. The acting Carrell and Chalamet exhibit is incredibly engaging and realistic.

While I was not a huge fan of the pacing and how the story was told, the film did well in showing the type of relationship the Sheff’s have. With the father being divorced, Nicholas must travel states away to see his mother. However, he does not seem upset with this, though the struggle and difficulty is made clear.

We see Nicholas go into a rehabilitation center, or clinic, to help him ease off his drug use in the beginning of the film and already seems to be getting better. However, addiction is a tricky road, so eventually he turns back to drugs. This is an ongoing issue through the film and it shows how overcoming a battle like this can be. 

The film does well in showing the affect Nicholas’ drug use has on his family. His siblings, father, stepmother and friends watch Nicholas get to a point where they thought he would die. Emotions are heightened, and anger and frustration are explored very well. Nicholas’ youngest siblings are unaware of what’s going on with their brother, and his parents are constantly shown to be frustrated because they are unable to help. Carrell’s character struggles and the audience sees him spiral into a depression, second guess every action of his son and watch his son struggle knowing he can’t do anything. 

Chalamet’s character, on the other hand, was complex. He portrays a very likeable, attractive young man who is passionate about writing, loves his family and feels so much for a girl he met in class. We see him struggle between right and wrong, and eventually, he becomes unlikeable. 

One aspect I would like more insight on was the stepmother. There was a moment in the film where Nicholas is caught stealing stuff from his father’s house to sell. His stepmother, at this point, has had enough. It’s not until this moment, which is close to the end, that we see her completely breakdown. This is the first time we see the complexity of her character.

This film is raw, as is the memoir. I think it does very well showing all sides of the story and how Nicholas got to the point he did. However, since so much had to be crammed into such little time, we don’t get to learn enough about the other characters. Every character in the film has a fresh perspective that could’ve taken center stage and provide a refreshing narrative.

You can watch “Beautiful Boy” on Amazon Prime Video, or buy it to stream later. You can also purchase the book for more on the story at all your local bookstores.

Review overview

8.8 "Beautiful Boy" transcends in acting but lacks in character development and pacing. Impactful film in terms of showing a variation of perspectives.

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