A hard-knocks addiction memoir buoyed with humor and insight.
An addict reflects on her long, bumpy road to eventual recovery.
“Welcome to the mind of an alcoholic addict,” writes Dresner in her effortlessly candid and wryly written chronicle of a life hijacked by drugs, booze, and bad behavior. As a noted West Hollywood stand-up comedian and addiction journalist, she handles this complex tale with wit; while a lot of her pain is deflected through her droll tone, there remains an undertone of suffering and debilitating illness. The narrative is refreshingly devoid of overanalysis on her childhood as the daughter of divorced parents who were “well matched in that they both loved to drink and fight.” Instead, the author delves directly into the heart of her own personal darkness, a fight with her husband that escalated into a pulled knife, a restraining order, and nights spent “smoking, squatting, and crying on the dark, quiet, ritzy sidewalks of the Hollywood Hills.” A vividly described (and short-lived) fifth visit to a rehab facility provided only a temporary fix. Hospital psychiatric holds, wrist cutting, divorce, emotionless sex, community service, and an admitted lack of impulse control collectively contributed to the author’s lowest points, which are depressingly abysmal yet illustrate a brutally honest insider’s viewpoint into cyclical, interdependent worlds of rehab, relapse, and recovery. In a conversational, self-deprecating tone, Dresner dictates a nonstop barrage of events in which AA meetings and everyday life blur into one another amid the tragic, rhythmic seesawing between inebriation and rickety detoxification. Some shared memories are crisply drawn, others clouded by the haze of chemically induced euphoria. Other chapters are gilded in some rather self-effacing hindsight wisdom: “I guess I am just one of those stubborn assholes who has to burn their house to the ground to realize you shouldn’t play with matches.” When Dresner finally decided to take getting clean seriously after performing a monthlong court-ordered service sweeping the condoms and syringes off Santa Monica Boulevard, her resolve is palpable.
A hard-knocks addiction memoir buoyed with humor and insight.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-43095-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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