A review by ariya1
The Night of the Gun by David Carr

4.0

Although I'd vaguely heard of David Carr (mainly because I routinely read the NY Times), I can't say that I was an avid follower of his columns. However, like some of the authors I start reading, I became interested in his memoir after learning of his untimely death in February 2015. I was intrigued by his trials and tribulations dealing with his addiction and the fact that he'd seem to overcome his addiction and was doing what he loved. I wasn't able to read his memoir until recently and it was a gripping tale of the ups and downs of addiction recovery. The first part of the book was a bit perplexing because I assumed that it would proceed in chronological order. It does, in a sense, but it isn't necessarily formatted in a strict linear fashion. Instead, he presented what I took as vignettes from his pre-recovery period that (to me) effectively conveyed the chaotic turmoil that ensues with addiction. As the book proceeds to his recovery period, it's a little more chronologically ordered. The effect is a subtle nod to the disorder of addiction versus the somewhat more ordered life of recovery. I'm not sure if that's what he intended but that's what I took from it. Unlike other memoirs of famous/quasi-famous people that at the end simply become a monotonous litany of name-dropping, Carr's memoir (thankfully) refrains from engaging in this. I also appreciated the journalistic methods he employed in attempting to recount the tremendously traumatic periods of his addiction and recovery.