A funny, rambling account of addiction and recovery.
Dinsmoor (The Yoga Divas and Other Stories, 2010) recounts his stint in rehab for alcoholism in this new memoir.
In 2011, the author, a 53-year-old yoga instructor and freelance writer, checked himself in for a monthlong program of sobriety at the Wetlands Rehabilitation Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. Convinced that he needed to quit drinking by a concerned cabal of friends and family, Dinsmoor was finally willing to seek professional help to curb a habit that had grown worse over the decades: “Time was when a six pack or a small bottle of wine would put me under, but now it took about twice that.” Life in rehab bore a strange resemblance to life back in elementary school: the center was segregated by gender, patients were monitored around the clock, and petty grievances took on inflated importance. Even a certain juvenile sense of humor arose: Dinsmoor remembers how one rehab technician admonished her patients after discovering a crude drawing of genitalia on a sign-in sheet: “From a distance, all I could see was a squiggle, but I was pretty sure I knew what it was.” His planned stay of 28 days ended up stretching to three months, and he recounts his adventures along the road to recovery, including going into withdrawal when he was taken off Ativan, accusing his roommate of secretly using cocaine, and having to bunk with the most active drug dealer in the compound. Through it all, the author tells his tale with an eye for the absurd and the humor of a man who thinks he’s the only sane cuckoo in the nest. He’s a confident writer with a practiced comic timing, and although his story isn’t particularly dramatic or traumatic, it offers welcome insight into the rehabilitation industry and the sorts of characters found therein. The most intriguing conclusion readers may draw from his experience is that despite the fraternity of sponsors and support groups, recovery is ultimately a solitary pursuit. As people fade in and out, fall off the wagon, or disappear, one is reminded that the only person who can keep a patient sober is the patient himself.
A funny, rambling account of addiction and recovery.Pub Date: June 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9890113-2-7
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Art2000
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extraordinary true tale of torment, retribution, and loyalty that's irresistibly readable in spite of its intrusively melodramatic prose. Starting out with calculated, movie-ready anecdotes about his boyhood gang, Carcaterra's memoir takes a hairpin turn into horror and then changes tack once more to relate grippingly what must be one of the most outrageous confidence schemes ever perpetrated. Growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s, former New York Daily News reporter Carcaterra (A Safe Place, 1993) had three close friends with whom he played stickball, bedeviled nuns, and ran errands for the neighborhood Mob boss. All this is recalled through a dripping mist of nostalgia; the streetcorner banter is as stilted and coy as a late Bowery Boys film. But a third of the way in, the story suddenly takes off: In 1967 the four friends seriously injured a man when they more or less unintentionally rolled a hot-dog cart down the steps of a subway entrance. The boys, aged 11 to 14, were packed off to an upstate New York reformatory so brutal it makes Sing Sing sound like Sunnybrook Farm. The guards continually raped and beat them, at one point tossing all of them into solitary confinement, where rats gnawed at their wounds and the menu consisted of oatmeal soaked in urine. Two of Carcaterra's friends were dehumanized by their year upstate, eventually becoming prominent gangsters. In 1980, they happened upon the former guard who had been their principal torturer and shot him dead. The book's stunning denouement concerns the successful plot devised by the author and his third friend, now a Manhattan assistant DA, to free the two killers and to exact revenge against the remaining ex-guards who had scarred their lives so irrevocably. Carcaterra has run a moral and emotional gauntlet, and the resulting book, despite its flaws, is disturbing and hard to forget. (Film rights to Propaganda; author tour)
Pub Date: July 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-345-39606-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.
The renowned writer offers advice on information-gathering and nonfiction composition.
The book consists of eight instructive and charming essays about creating narratives, all of them originally composed for the New Yorker, where McPhee (Silk Parachute, 2010, etc.) has been a contributor since the mid-1960s. Reading them consecutively in one volume constitutes a master class in writing, as the author clearly demonstrates why he has taught so successfully part-time for decades at Princeton University. In one of the essays, McPhee focuses on the personalities and skills of editors and publishers for whom he has worked, and his descriptions of those men and women are insightful and delightful. The main personality throughout the collection, though, is McPhee himself. He is frequently self-deprecating, occasionally openly proud of his accomplishments, and never boring. In his magazine articles and the books resulting from them, McPhee rarely injects himself except superficially. Within these essays, he offers a departure by revealing quite a bit about his journalism, his teaching life, and daughters, two of whom write professionally. Throughout the collection, there emerge passages of sly, subtle humor, a quality often absent in McPhee’s lengthy magazine pieces. Since some subjects are so weighty—especially those dealing with geology—the writing can seem dry. There is no dry prose here, however. Almost every sentence sparkles, with wordplay evident throughout. Another bonus is the detailed explanation of how McPhee decided to tackle certain topics and then how he chose to structure the resulting pieces. Readers already familiar with the author’s masterpieces—e.g., Levels of the Game, Encounters with the Archdruid, Looking for a Ship, Uncommon Carriers, Oranges, and Coming into the Country—will feel especially fulfilled by McPhee’s discussions of the specifics from his many books.
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-14274-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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