An involving and moving look at the journey from addiction to recovery.
A look at the Twelve Steps of addiction recovery seen through the eyes of mythology.
At the heart of this book is the recovery framework of Alcoholics Anonymous, the Twelve Steps group members follow in their struggle to return to sobriety. The author, writing anonymously, attempts to map the Twelve Steps onto the outline of the hero’s journey as described by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), noting that Bill Wilson, the co-founder of AA and the creator of the Twelve Steps, “reached into the collective unconscious, drew out this archetypal pattern of transformation,” and created “the modern map of recovery.” The author goes through the Twelve Steps one by one, discussing each in detail and drawing comparisons with a roughly equivalent stage of the hero’s journey as described by Campbell. Step 5, for instance, requires an admission “to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” The author expertly elaborates: “The alcoholic ego wants to turn to what it believes is an easier way of dealing with these defects which doesn’t include self-disclosure,” adding, “These easier, softer ways didn’t work before, and they will certainly not work now.” The book’s organizing conceit is obvious but nonetheless effective. And although the author’s underlying assertion that the recovery process is itself heroic, which is certainly true, the book’s main attraction throughout is the wonderfully sharp and knowing reflections on the nature of addiction and recovery writ more broadly. The device of mapping this onto Campbell is thought-provoking, but it’s the author’s deeply felt plumbing of the “abyss of self” through which every addict must journey that makes the book so unexpectedly gripping. Recovering addicts and alcoholics in particular should read this book, not because they consider themselves heroes (far from it; humility is built into the Twelve Steps), but to find their struggles very eloquently described.
An involving and moving look at the journey from addiction to recovery.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780757326004
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Health Communications Inc.
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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