One hint that the author and protagonist of A Fan’s Notes (1968) are really the same person is that they are both called Frederick Exley. All these books might have been published as memoir in a less stigmatising age. Her mother and manager, Diana, started drinking again and faced a number of mental health-related struggles.…
In college, my friends and I joked that it’s not alcoholism until you graduate. Then I told myself it was because I was a journalist working the night shift. Then I insisted the daily drinking was just part of adulthood. I recently came to terms with my own problematic relationship with alcohol, and my one…
The 15 most powerful memoirs about addiction and recovery Only in rare cases—as when the subject of a biography dies—is the answer simple. In other kinds, as in novels, endings are artifices of form, and the trick is not to let this feel true for the reader. But the challenge is particularly acute when the…
Reading this book was the beginning of a new perspective for me. It got me thinking the one thing I never wanted to be true… maybe it is the alcohol that’s making me so miserable? https://ecosoberhouse.com/ Ditlevsen’s trilogy, by contrast, plunges us into the perspective of a succession of her former selves. When she’s a…
