If you’re in the mood for a well-written, relatable, rock-bottom recovery memoir, this will hit the spot.
A Seattle-based political reporter recounts her tumultuous, nearly deadly dance with the bottle.
Writing a recovery memoir seems to be Step 13 for many professional writers of nonfiction who make it out the other side of addiction: Pete Hamill, Leslie Jamison, Mary Karr, David Carr, Caroline Knapp, and Sarah Hepola are just a few of the names that spring to mind. Perhaps because such authors have claimed truth-telling as their life’s work, and because addiction involves so many lies, putting an honest version of this story in print is a necessary part of reclaiming their identities as writers. The problem, of course, is that it’s usually the same story, which puts a heavy burden on prose style. Barnett rises to the challenge with a witty, self-deprecating, sometimes snide voice. (She describes her boyfriend’s friends as “well-adjusted in ways that made me nervous, with carefully curated lives filled with long-haired, gender fluid children, camping trips, and backyard chicken coops.”) The author engagingly chronicles her Southern roots and her school years in a Houston suburb, including some heavy teenage drinking, and then moves on to her first jobs, at the Texas Observer and the Austin Chronicle. In Austin, she found that “the grown-up world replicates high school in ways we don’t always recognize or acknowledge,” and her attempts to fit in with her new peer group led to her first blackout drinking. Barnett's journey involved an almost unbearable number of relapses, and readers may begin to feel the way her family and friends did: out of patience and sympathy. Nonetheless, this is the truth, and she tells it openly. Like many others, she utterly denied that AA was right for her—until it became the only way to save her life.
If you’re in the mood for a well-written, relatable, rock-bottom recovery memoir, this will hit the spot.Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-52232-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
“Protect your passion,” writes an NBA star in this winning exploration of how we can succeed in life.
A future basketball Hall of Famer’s rosy outlook.
Curry is that rare athlete who looks like he gets joy from what he does. There’s no doubt that the Golden State Warriors point guard is a competitor—he’s led his team to four championships—but he plays the game with nonchalance and exuberance. That ease, he says, “only comes from discipline.” He practices hard enough—he’s altered the sport by mastering the three-point shot—so that he achieves a “kind of freedom.” In that “flow state,” he says, “I can let joy and creativity take over. I block out all distractions, even the person guarding me. He can wave his arms and call me every name in the book, but I just smile and wait as the solution to the problem—how to get the ball into the basket—presents itself.” Curry shares this approach to his craft in a stylish collection that mixes life lessons with sharp photographs and archival images. His dad, Dell, played in the NBA for 16 years, and Curry learned much from his father and mother: “My parents were extremely strict about me and my little brother Seth not going to my pops’s games on school nights.” Curry’s mother, Sonya, who founded the Montessori elementary school that Curry attended in North Carolina, emphasized the importance not just of learning but of playing. Her influence helped Curry and his wife, Ayesha, create a nonprofit foundation: Eat. Learn. Play. He writes that “making reading fun is the key to unlocking a kid’s ability to be successful in their academic journeys.” The book also has valuable pointers for ballers—and those hoping to hit the court. “Plant those arches—knees bent behind those 10 toes pointing at the hoop, hips squared with your shoulders—and draw your power up so you explode off the ground and rise into your shot.” Sounds easy, right?
“Protect your passion,” writes an NBA star in this winning exploration of how we can succeed in life.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780593597293
Page Count: 432
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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