'The End of San Francisco' The End of San FranciscoBy Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore(City Lights; 186 pages; $15.95 paperback)"If I'm trying to establish a narrative here," writes Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore in her short but potent memoir, "The End of San Francisco," "crying is that narrative and everything else is around it." The details of the abuse emerge slowly throughout the book, and in the end are exposed to be a small, if significant, fragment of this frantic kaleidoscope of mourning and survival. (The book's title refers to her attempt to find safety and security in the mythical gay mecca of San Francisco, and the realization of loss when that fails.) Sycamore's family is a nest of control freaks.