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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
even though I've read plenty of dysfunctional and alcoholic memoires - this one really stuck with me - maybe due to the 'high functioning' nature of the author or the closeness in age and education and professional post-college lifestyle. Was particularly saddened to Google the author after reading and learn that she had passed away, recently.
Caroline Knapp comes from a seemingly "perfect" home: educated, affluent, successful, stable. She's not like "those people" who become alcoholics - she has nothing to point to for why she needs a bottle of vodka at the end of the day. But then, she's not really that bad of a drunk. She has a good job, she's attractive, she has so much going for her, unlike those fall-down drunks on the streets. The beauty of Knapp's memoir, aside from the gorgeous writing, is the way she breaks down what people imagine they know about alcoholism and puts it into perspective about what it's like inside the mind of an alcoholic. How she hides her own insecurities behind drinking, how it serves as a solace and also a source of strength. How it's always "just this once," how she swears whatever behavior will never happen again, how the demons will creep in if she doesn't have the alcohol to numb the pain. There are so many amazing insights in this book, oddly applicable no matter what the addiction, even something as seemingly benign as sugar or social media usage. I was so sad to hear that Knapp had died very young of cancer, but she left a hugely important legacy with this book. I'll be thinking about it for a long time.
More of a stats and psychology on alcoholism than autobiography. Parts were very slow to get through, and honestly there were times I read it just to fall asleep. But I wanted to read it prior to Let's Take the Long Way Home. So, mission accomplished!
Read like Raiders of the Ark. Gems to be found, but I didn’t enjoy the adventure to find them.
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
This is the story of Caroline Knapp, an alcoholic who eventually stopped drinking. She was raised in Massachusetts and came from a wealthy family. She graduated with honors from Brown University and became a journalist. From the outside looking in, one would never assume she was an alcoholic. Her story tells of depression and confusion, of what was going on inside of her head all of those years. She vividly explains how alcoholics think and react.
Having had a relationship with an alcoholic in my own past, this book spoke to me. It gave me a sense of understanding that I haven’t had before- that until an alcoholic truly wants to stop drinking for themselves, they just won’t or can’t. For anyone that has an alcoholic in their life, I highly recommend reading this. It really showed me an alcoholic’s way of thinking that I never quite grasped before.
Having had a relationship with an alcoholic in my own past, this book spoke to me. It gave me a sense of understanding that I haven’t had before- that until an alcoholic truly wants to stop drinking for themselves, they just won’t or can’t. For anyone that has an alcoholic in their life, I highly recommend reading this. It really showed me an alcoholic’s way of thinking that I never quite grasped before.
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
"Over the years I've come to think of memories as tiny living things, microorganisms that swim through the brain until they're found the right compartment in which to settle down and rest. If the compartment isn't available, there's no proper label for they memory, it takes up residence somewhere else, gets lodged in a corner and gnaws at your periodically, cropping up at odd times, or in dreams. "
This book is maaaaybe one of my favorites??? At least that I've read this year.
This book is maaaaybe one of my favorites??? At least that I've read this year.
A somewhat long-winded but compelling description of the complex relationship between alcohol and the alcoholic. Knapp is articulate and intelligent not to mention unflinchingly honest about her story.
I read this book in month 7 of my recent sobriety. In the snippets I had picked up, I was hoping for an account that reflected my experience with alcohol, and I was not disappointed. Caroline Knapp paints a vivid, profound portrait of the experience of somebody who's relationship with drinking takes the all-too-natural course into psychological illness. She is self-reflective and intelligent enough to fill this book with psychological insight and potential correlations between her history, her inner turmoil, and her alcohol abuse; but rather than trying to tell her own story as though it has a clear arc of plot (a mistake that I think too many memoirs make), she manages to beautifully overlay her past with her present, presenting her sickness as the muddled, complicated, transparent but distorting glass through which she experiences her life.
I recommend this book to anybody and everybody, regardless of your relationship with alcohol or addiction. As a candid account of her experience of alcoholism, anorexia, and intractable unhealthy relationships, I found it both enlightened and enlightening. I think that Knapp has tapped into a vein of truth about human experience and the suffering that comes from simply owning a human brain- confounded, complicated kluge that it is.
I recommend this book to anybody and everybody, regardless of your relationship with alcohol or addiction. As a candid account of her experience of alcoholism, anorexia, and intractable unhealthy relationships, I found it both enlightened and enlightening. I think that Knapp has tapped into a vein of truth about human experience and the suffering that comes from simply owning a human brain- confounded, complicated kluge that it is.