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A review by lucrezi
Dry by Augusten Burroughs
3.0
You know how there are charismatic people on the edges of your life, the ones you might hang out with once or twice and find them endlessly entertaining for their wild stories, but you wouldn't feel inclined to integrate them into your day-to-day? Augusten Burroughs seems to be one of those people. He's interesting on paper and from afar, but up close, you see that many of the situations he gets into and his reactions to them are... not very appealing.
I feel both affinity and aversion towards him, because he (at least in Dry) was a mess who didn't know how to deal with his emotions and so he turned to the bottle. I get it. Those feelings of unknowably intense loneliness and push-them-away-before-they-leave-you - I get it.
I really get it. And though I may not feel that way after learning to deal with my own shit in healthy ways, reading about it through someone else's experience was pretty unpleasant. I'm reminded of a version of myself that was the same and did the same things, and I feel that ripple of shame that makes me want to put down my Kindle and take a break.
The first half of the novel is great. I liked reading about Augusten in rehab and Augusten going to therapy and AA. The second half is not so great - I got bored and wanted it to end sooner. I prefer his short stories.
I feel both affinity and aversion towards him, because he (at least in Dry) was a mess who didn't know how to deal with his emotions and so he turned to the bottle. I get it. Those feelings of unknowably intense loneliness and push-them-away-before-they-leave-you - I get it.
I go to the bed and sit on the edge, sinking into the plush down comforter and the featherbed below. I feel a prick of good fortune, an awareness that I am lucky to have such a nice bed to sit on during my anxiety attack. Why am I so anxious? And then it hits me. I’m not anxious, I’m lonely. And I’m lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be so lonely because it seems catastrophic—seeing the car just as it hits you. But then all of a sudden, that feeling is gone and I’m blank. So it’s like a door quickly opened, just a crack, to show me what a mess I was inside. But not enough to really stare for long and absorb all the details. Just enough to know the room needed a major spring cleaning.
I really get it. And though I may not feel that way after learning to deal with my own shit in healthy ways, reading about it through someone else's experience was pretty unpleasant. I'm reminded of a version of myself that was the same and did the same things, and I feel that ripple of shame that makes me want to put down my Kindle and take a break.
The first half of the novel is great. I liked reading about Augusten in rehab and Augusten going to therapy and AA. The second half is not so great - I got bored and wanted it to end sooner. I prefer his short stories.