On the other hand, while the harrowing post-curfew checkpoint incident did happen, what appears on screen is a re-creation.
So while inherently harrowing as a story of confinement, savagery and despair, "Giraffe" was also a novel about writing a novel, a kind of self-tutorial witnessed by his readers.
Cadete is not the first and will not be the last to be unable to handle a life beyond playing; Paul Gascoigne is perhaps the obvious name to mention here, while the harrowing tale of the former Arsenal full-back Kenny Sansom also gives an insight into a world many fans will not think could exist when they are cheering on their heroes.
It is the lazy, tone-deaf stuff we spout from the comforts of our first world lives, in which we have the privilege to sip iced coffees while watching harrowing live footage on a television news channel.
It is 1788, the monarch is behaving bizarrely, and his devoted Queen (Helen Mirren) has been plucked from his side while doctors attempt harrowing cures.
His New York life was artistic and threadbare (the stories of his poverty while shooting "Shadows" are harrowing), his studio pursuits were lucrative but deadening.
His challenge here, moving to the shady side of the post-imperial slope, is to unfold a harrowing tale while simultaneously entertaining his devoted readers with his customary galère of twits, alcoholics, transvestites, and fantasists.
Nonscientists who read his astonishing and hair-raising A Farewell to Ice will agree that the interludes of autobiography it contains are engrossing, entertaining and, when one submarine suffers an onboard explosion and fire while under the ice, harrowing.
The risk was that the outer child-that is, the paunchy and balding 52-year-old one enveloping the inner-would look pathetic shrieking "Whooppeeeee!" or more likely, "Help meeeeeeee!" while sluicing downward at harrowing velocity.
While it must have been harrowing to get lost on the way, your fear of crossing the bridge at the Mountain of the Bear doesn't make sense.
