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A review by bookybrookey
Wasted: A Story of Alcohol, Grief and a Death in Brisbane by Elspeth Muir
3.0
I almost put this book down after the first page had sentences like: ‘Crickets fucked in the bougainvillea’ and I saw that the author had been published in literary journals like the Lifted Brow that published pieces that would not find that phrase unusual. However, I had to read it for a university assignment so I persisted.
In the end there weren’t many more phrases like this and Muir discussed many important aspects of alcohol and Australian society that I found insightful and interesting.
Overall the whole book just made me glad that my parents and my closest friends aren’t drinkers because I think this plays a huge part in the fact that I don’t drink. The book really showed the dangers of drinking and the horrible spiral of negative events that can occur in life as a result.
I found my reading experience was similar to that of Wild by Cheryl Strayed whereby I was shaking my head at the author and her subject’s bad choices from a young age. But unlike Wild there was no hike across miles and mountains so I did not enjoy Wasted as much.
Unfortunately I’m even more convinced that Australia has a horrible relationship with alcohol and that the drastic changes that are needed to change this are coming about too slowly. I want to push this book into the faces of the people I know who drink excessively and shout ‘Wake up. This is not living and you are harming yourselves every Friday and Saturday night for no good reason!’ But alas, people who would rather live off bread for a week to save money for alcohol aren’t likely to spend the time or money on reading the book anyway.
In the end there weren’t many more phrases like this and Muir discussed many important aspects of alcohol and Australian society that I found insightful and interesting.
Overall the whole book just made me glad that my parents and my closest friends aren’t drinkers because I think this plays a huge part in the fact that I don’t drink. The book really showed the dangers of drinking and the horrible spiral of negative events that can occur in life as a result.
I found my reading experience was similar to that of Wild by Cheryl Strayed whereby I was shaking my head at the author and her subject’s bad choices from a young age. But unlike Wild there was no hike across miles and mountains so I did not enjoy Wasted as much.
Unfortunately I’m even more convinced that Australia has a horrible relationship with alcohol and that the drastic changes that are needed to change this are coming about too slowly. I want to push this book into the faces of the people I know who drink excessively and shout ‘Wake up. This is not living and you are harming yourselves every Friday and Saturday night for no good reason!’ But alas, people who would rather live off bread for a week to save money for alcohol aren’t likely to spend the time or money on reading the book anyway.