Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'

Bewilderness by Karen Tucker

1 review

just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

 
Finished my 9th Aspen Words 2022 Longlist read! This is another that I would absolutely not have picked up without it being on the longlist, as really nothing from the cover to the description really grabbed my interest. (Though I'm always here for a book set in NC, and this author even currently teaches at my twice alma mater, UNC-CH, so that did raise my interest marginally after I found it out.) And again, my goal to read this longlist is proving to be well-made, because I absolutely couldn't put this down. 
 
Luce and Irene meet while working at a pool hall in rural North Carolina, and a spontaneous joint road trip venture to get revenge on a creepy customer brings them together. It also introduces them to the world of pills, with its incredible highs...and incredible lows. The two girls become fast friends, sharing the experiences of endless nights working in restaurants and hustles to get their hands on more drugs. It's just the two of them, a wonderful friendship...until Luce meets a guy and together, they make plans to get clean and start fresh Florida. Irene will do anything for Luce, so she joins her in quitting, going to meetings, fighting the cravings, saving money while continuing to work in restaurants. But then tragedy strikes and Irene and Luce find themselves sliding back into addiction. 
 
Like I said, nothing about the blurb for this book called out to me originally, but oh my goodness, the connection between Irene and Luce pulled me in from the very first pages. Their friendship is absolutely stunningly written, just as dazzling and wild and wonderful as book description describes. They came to life in these pages, with a recognizable spark of female friendships that lights up everything about this book. And even as their relationship changes over time, morphs with drug use and increasing codependence, and sometimes causes just as much sorrow as it does joy (particularly for our narrator, Irene), it burns strong and bright. And phew, that made the whole story hit different, harder, unexpectedly relatable in a way that cuts deep if you've ever had a close [female] friendship like that. Along those lines, if you have ever worked in a restaurant, the representation of that is...spot on. This is like an entire ode to the restaurant industry, in all its infamy and glory. 
 
There's no way to review this book without talking about opioids and addiction. If this is a topic you find it hard to read about, then I recommend being very careful about picking up this novel. The discussion of drug use, specifically opioids and primarily focusing on misuse/abuse of prescription pharmaceuticals, is graphic. And the way addiction mentally affects a person, in all aspects of life, as well as the struggle and pride and pain and constant effort involved in recovery is equally graphic. There are a few particular aspects, involving an overdose and fuzzy recollection of humiliation after being rufied and (very much) the end of Luce's part of the story, that were quite difficult to read. I do not have any direct experience with the majority of the details on these topics, so with that caveat in mind, this read like a very accurate and precise account, recounting the reality without overdoing/theatricalizing it. Tucker really hones in on the cycle of addiction and sobriety, the way desire for escape or something better is the reason for both, and how they play off each other in increasing magnitude, that for our characters can feel impossible to face. 
 
A few context notes here. This was a great book to pick up so soon after reading Empire of Pain, because it provided fascinating juxtaposition, one covering the rise of the opioid industrial complex and the family behind it, the other focusing on the lives of the people so deeply affected by that selfish and arrogant family. I was especially captivated by Luce and Irene's perspective: not knowing all the details and truths of the opioid epidemic, though knowing on some level(s) that things are rigged against them; interacting with and manipulating the systems around them in the day-to-day, while never realizing how effectively they’re being manipulated in turn by systems taking advantage of vulnerable populations on a large scale. Also, I cannot not mention the way the author writes the everyday-ness in the  harassment women face, in regular life (restaurants) and within less legal (drug/addiction) situations. Always, always it’s ubiquitous, and worse, for them (and, as noted a few times, even more so for people/women of color).   
 
This was a distinctive read for me, in that it was so difficult, topically, while also being an easy (in a page-turning sense), read. Tucker balances gallows humor in perfect proportion with more serious reality. I was really cheering for Irene and Luce. They were so messy and human and honestly, if that’s not worth hoping to see success in, I don't know what is. Although I recognize that the impact of this one is not as intense as some of the 2022 long-listers that made the final five, I definitely see why it made the longlist in the first place and applaud the incredibly compelling characters that Tucker crafted in these pages. 
 
“Believe me when I say that if someone you love ODs and doesn’t survive it, more than anything you’ll want to medicate yourself out of that particular torture – even if it means dosing yourself with their exact same poison. There’s more than one way to get close to someone.” 
 
“You believe what you want to believe. I guess it was just another hustle, is what I’m saying, except this particular hustle was one we pulled on ourselves.” 
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