Larry Bograd’s Blood Flow is a raw, unfiltered memoir that stitches together decades of family trauma, personal ambition, health battles, and the relentless search for meaning. Starting with his heart surgery at age 53, eerily close to when his father died, Bograd flips back and forth through time, weaving stories of boyhood misadventures, a rocky writing career, and adult anxieties. It’s not a straight line; it’s a winding, messy journey through memories, many of them bittersweet, some of them laugh-out-loud funny, and others gut-wrenchingly sad.

One thing I really liked about Blood Flow was how unsparingly honest Bograd is about himself. He doesn’t polish the mirror. When he writes about dragging his broken post-surgery body across airports in “Canceled,” you can feel his pain and his stubbornness. I almost wanted to yell at the pages: “Larry, go home, man!” He talks about dragging his carry-on bag, stinking from a day’s worth of sweat and city grime, just to chase after the consulting career he had risked everything to build. It’s both hilarious and heartbreaking, and it made me really root for him, even when he made some obviously terrible choices. You don’t often see a memoirist so willing to look foolish, and it made him feel incredibly human.

Another thing that stuck with me was the way he tackled family history, especially the chapters where he digs into his father’s mysterious past and death. In “Bubbe Meises,” he interviews long-lost cousins Edna and Archie, piecing together the broken story of a man who was charming, brilliant, and ultimately crushed by depression. These scenes were deeply emotional, full of love but also full of pain. I teared up when Edna said, “Did he want to kill all of us? Because that’s what he did!” That moment hit like a gut punch. It made me think about how family stories are stitched together from grief and guilt just as much as from love.

That said, there were moments when the memoir became weighed down by its own melancholy. Certain sections, such as “Working in a Coal Mine, Going Down, Down, Down,” are particularly mired in introspection and financial anxiety. While the depth of personal struggle is understandable, I occasionally wished Bograd had broadened the perspective, offering a wider view beyond his internal battles. Nevertheless, even in the slower passages, his sharp humor and keen observations continued to offer compelling reasons to stay engaged.

By the end of Blood Flow, I felt like I had walked a long, hard road with Bograd, and weirdly, I didn’t feel sad. I felt grateful. Grateful for the honesty, for the messy way he told the truth, for the weird little triumphs tucked between all the losses. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who’s ever struggled with family legacy, creative dreams that don’t pan out the way you hope, or the sheer stubborn business of staying alive. If you like memoirs that are gritty, funny, tender, and sometimes a little heartbreaking, Blood Flow will absolutely be worth your time.

Pages; 264 | ASIN : B0F1TZYZ3R