Product Description

What makes Knapp''s account fascinating is her ruthless dissection of a picture-perfect middle-class family, her candid analysis of her high functioning journalistic career, and a weird elegy for the 1980s.'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15589 in Books
• Published on: 1997-08-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

A Classic
A brilliant first hand description of what it is to be like to be afunctional alcoholic, someone who has a good job, a home, a boyfriend, and on the surface a perfectly normal and respectable life.

Caroline Knapp tells everything just the way it was, from the perspectiveof several years spent in Alcoholics Anonymous, sparing no embarrassing details of what happened along the way. Her aim is clearly to try and helpothers with her story, which is far more common (at around 10% of the population) than most people's impressions of what an alcoholic is ordoes. She doesn't try and glamorise her drinking, and the book is sobrutally honest that I felt I almost knew her by the end of it!

Sadly a few years after writing the book the author died from another addiction (lung cancer as a result of smoking), which make her mother's final words on her death bed to Caroline (as revealed in the book) particularly prophetic.

Makes you think ... but doesn't preach
Quite simply one of the most eye-opening books I have ever read. It is not a "self help" book, nor an advertisement for AlAnon, but a frank and very insightful glimpse into the world of the "high functioning" alcoholic.

Apart from those who have never touched a drop in theirs lives, I guarantee that there won't be a single person who doesn't at least identify with some parts of this book.

Caroline Knapp doesn't just tell us that the road she traveled is bad, what she does so well is to shine a light on that road, so we can see where we are, and where we are going, and make our own minds up. And she manages to do all this with great humour, and of course sadness.

I have never been able to say "That was a bad day, I deserve a drink" after reading this...without stopping to think what I am saying. It didn't stop me enjoying a drink, but it did make me realise the line between social drinking and alcoholism is so very faint, that I might just not notice crossing it. This book makes that line a little clearer.

Best in it's genre
I'm always hesitant to read sobriety books that include promoting AA as the only way to stay sober and indeed Knapp was of the same opinion - even going to a meeting and deciding it wasn't for her for a number of years until going back. She doesn't 'bang the book' throughout and is quite honest about some of her compatriots who have recovered without AA.

I have read many books on the addiction subject and where Frey's 'A million little pieces' is sensationalised, this strikes the reader as pure honesty. Knapp writes so well you begin to think of her as a heroine. She does not have the many crazy antics most alcoholics have gone through (although she is a lifelong drunk driver) but she is pointed enough to understand that for her, the cheating lieing and coverups is as bad as any car wreck

This is a fantastic inspiring read.