Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Very emotional and reflective memoir of addiction - I liked the writing, the author's insightful comments as she looks back on many years of alcoholism. At times the events were hard to follow as she went back and forth between several major events - romantic relationships, jobs, cities, deaths - but it was moving and beautiful to read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Grief
I took six weeks to read this book, so I'm not sure if the fact that it felt long and repetitive is the author's or my fault. It's still worth reading.
I found this memoir to be very honest and eye opening to what and how an addictions crypts the mind and body. I was relieved she continued her sobriety to live a life she was over due for. doing a little research on her, noting she died of lung ca. in 2002, saddens me.
Not sure if I've had such a visceral experience from a book before. Much of this was very close to home for me, as an adult child with quite a family history of alcoholism. Knapp's bravery and honesty in writing about her experience growing up with a high-functioning alcoholic father, becoming an alcoholic herself, and then finally getting and staying clean is breathtaking. Over and over, I found myself reading her words and then just putting the book down to absorb what she had said. Her insight into her father's and her own alcoholism is clearly the result of years of brutally difficult work around sobriety, and she answered many questions I didn't know I had. Aside from my own connection to her story, she also writes beautifully and knows how to tell a story you just don't want to put down, even as you feel increasingly frightened for her in her struggle with an intense addiction.
I loved this book, and I'm not entirely sure I can explain why. A lot of memoirs by alcoholics follow the basic thread of "here's my background, here are the terrible things I did when I was drinking, here's how I realized I needed to stop," and Knapp's book does all of those things, but in a way that felt fresh and new. Her insights are so real and raw and interesting, and she's such a talented writer, and she skips forwards and backwards in her story to highlight different points. It was just really beautiful and poignant and bittersweet, particularly with the knowledge that she died at 42, less than 10 years after publishing this book.
Very touching and harrowing. Hit way too close to home, in uncomfortable but also good and necessary ways. Filled me with hope about sobriety and growth, but halfway through reading it, I found out the author died six years later from lung cancer at age forty-two.
I couldn't finish this one. It's not badly written, but I think it needed some serious editing and would have been much better if it was shorter. It felt very repetitive, especially when she was talking about the effects of alcohol or what drives alcoholics. If this was your first time ever reading about alcoholism or its underlying reasons, it might be more interesting. But if you've read Mary Karr or any other writings on the subject, a lot of this book will probably feel like filler. Knapp's personal story was more interesting, but it got buried.
After recently reading Knapp's book 'Appetites' I went back and re-read 'Drinking'. Knapp has a masterly skill of taking the events of her own life and using them to explore larger issues than just her own problems. This is an honest and at times brutal look at her own problems with alcohol, and paints a great picture of how alcoholics are not just winos or obvious 'problem' people, but that they can also be people who from the outside seem to have it all together, whereas the reality is that they are struggling with addiction.
I read the first fifty pages and skimmed the next fifty, and aside from identifying a couple of people of my acquaintance as high-functioning alcoholics, I found nothing terribly gripping or even interesting about this memoir. Maybe I quit before it got good, but I'm okay with that possibility.
Caroline gives her story of addiction to alcohol moving toward recovery. It is well written and gives some good incite for those that struggle to understand addiction or how a person can become addicted without past trauma or a genetic link. My only critique is it is 89% drunkalogue. I don't mind drunkalogues but the intriguing journey is that of recovery, which she glosses over and spends very little talking about besides saying it was painful at first and has changed her life for the better.