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jordanbookler 's review for:
The Gilded Razor: A Memoir
by Sam Lansky
The Gilded Razor was such a pleasurable but tough read. The writing was so beautiful and strategic. Sam Lansky has a way of communicating feelings and situations that really just makes sense in its own unique way, that really involves you in his story.
I devoured chapters of this book, and ebbed and flowed between admiring the excitement and glamorously debaucherous life he lead, to feeling emotional torment figuring out who I was supposed to empathise with as I was faced with the feeling of sadness, care or hope that had too many layers to just feel without asking myself why I felt it.
As I got further into the memoir, this feeling of chaotic empathy is in part what made this book so rough for me to take in at times, and also what I think made it such an involved, and realistic experience. For large portions I read as though I was Sam Lansky, feeling the frustration, resentment, and helplessness. While other times I read as though Sam Lansky was my friend, feeling the hope, concern, and responsibility, as though turning to the next chapter was nerve-wracking because I didn't know if I was prepping to read supportively or with worry. But the most painful parts were the flashes of reading from his parents perspective, as I felt sharp feelings of loss, heartbreak, resignation and defeatedness. Because of the latter perspective, it actually brought me to tears at one point.
However, overwhelmingly this book just made me scared. Realising that addiction is not reserved for bad people, or for distant acquaintances, nor is it only drug and alcohol related. It isn't a solitary experience, and the pain is not numbed but just displaced and shifted to those that care about you. And getting to see the dialogue of someone knowingly watch themselves being someone they didn't want to be and not be able to fix it, it just latched itself onto all my fears of loss of control.
Despite not being a must-read, I would absolutely recommend this book.
I devoured chapters of this book, and ebbed and flowed between admiring the excitement and glamorously debaucherous life he lead, to feeling emotional torment figuring out who I was supposed to empathise with as I was faced with the feeling of sadness, care or hope that had too many layers to just feel without asking myself why I felt it.
As I got further into the memoir, this feeling of chaotic empathy is in part what made this book so rough for me to take in at times, and also what I think made it such an involved, and realistic experience. For large portions I read as though I was Sam Lansky, feeling the frustration, resentment, and helplessness. While other times I read as though Sam Lansky was my friend, feeling the hope, concern, and responsibility, as though turning to the next chapter was nerve-wracking because I didn't know if I was prepping to read supportively or with worry. But the most painful parts were the flashes of reading from his parents perspective, as I felt sharp feelings of loss, heartbreak, resignation and defeatedness. Because of the latter perspective, it actually brought me to tears at one point.
However, overwhelmingly this book just made me scared. Realising that addiction is not reserved for bad people, or for distant acquaintances, nor is it only drug and alcohol related. It isn't a solitary experience, and the pain is not numbed but just displaced and shifted to those that care about you. And getting to see the dialogue of someone knowingly watch themselves being someone they didn't want to be and not be able to fix it, it just latched itself onto all my fears of loss of control.
Despite not being a must-read, I would absolutely recommend this book.