A review by diannagendron
The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison
2.0
2 stars, “it was ok.”
You can read my blathering or you can read the excellent review of The Recovering, “Ginned Up” by Laura Miller: https://slate.com/culture/2018/04/leslie-jamisons-the-recovering-reviewed.html
The thing about reading an ebook is when you pick it up, you can’t tell how long it is. At 544 pages, this was too long by a good 100 pages.
Girl, your sections of drunkalog needed editing, shortened, nipped in the forever droning bud. Your story, the “what it was like, what happened, and what I am like now” of any AA speaker meeting, dwells for an insufferable amount of time in the “what it was like,” (by your own admission your favorite part of any alcoholic’s story), and boy was it a repetitive mess of uninteresting. You’re not unique, we learn this in the rooms, and your specific brand of high bottom white girl story was such an utter drag. I COULD NOT WAIT for you to get to the solution, I kept hoping you would. Sure, for most of us alcoholics we get the insanity of doing the same thing over and over and over but did you really need to batter us with boring to show that? And geez all the time spent on your relationship...just no. These chapters of you in your drinking years need a swift, unmerciful axe. Cut by half at least.
The chapters focusing on OTHER famous and infamous creative alcoholics (Raymond Carver, Billie Holiday, David Foster Wallace et al) and the history of treatment and recovery in America...now those bits were interesting. Background on Bill W and the earlier years of asylums and institutions...I thought that was good stuff.
This is a book about AA, lacking focus on recovery for some reason, lacking the humility the program is predicated on. I do wonder about its reception by people not “in the rooms,” because my own experiences of alcoholism, surrender, recovery, and AA of course shape my thoughts on this droning tome. This needed marked up by a sponsor more than an editor or thesis advisor.
You can read my blathering or you can read the excellent review of The Recovering, “Ginned Up” by Laura Miller: https://slate.com/culture/2018/04/leslie-jamisons-the-recovering-reviewed.html
The thing about reading an ebook is when you pick it up, you can’t tell how long it is. At 544 pages, this was too long by a good 100 pages.
Girl, your sections of drunkalog needed editing, shortened, nipped in the forever droning bud. Your story, the “what it was like, what happened, and what I am like now” of any AA speaker meeting, dwells for an insufferable amount of time in the “what it was like,” (by your own admission your favorite part of any alcoholic’s story), and boy was it a repetitive mess of uninteresting. You’re not unique, we learn this in the rooms, and your specific brand of high bottom white girl story was such an utter drag. I COULD NOT WAIT for you to get to the solution, I kept hoping you would. Sure, for most of us alcoholics we get the insanity of doing the same thing over and over and over but did you really need to batter us with boring to show that? And geez all the time spent on your relationship...just no. These chapters of you in your drinking years need a swift, unmerciful axe. Cut by half at least.
The chapters focusing on OTHER famous and infamous creative alcoholics (Raymond Carver, Billie Holiday, David Foster Wallace et al) and the history of treatment and recovery in America...now those bits were interesting. Background on Bill W and the earlier years of asylums and institutions...I thought that was good stuff.
This is a book about AA, lacking focus on recovery for some reason, lacking the humility the program is predicated on. I do wonder about its reception by people not “in the rooms,” because my own experiences of alcoholism, surrender, recovery, and AA of course shape my thoughts on this droning tome. This needed marked up by a sponsor more than an editor or thesis advisor.