Drinking : A Love Story

Rating:
Summary: Powerful Insight
Review: Caroline's father told her that sometimes insight is simply a rearrangement of fact. I drank because I was unhappy...maybe, just maybe I was unhappy because I drank. These words hit home when I first read this book and I carry them with me today as I go through my first year of sobriety. I have recommended this book to other women, suggesting they read it like a novel first and then if anything rings true to them, read it like a textbook a second time. This book was instrumental in getting me to take an honest look at myself, then getting me to AA, and giving me the privelege of living 2 lives in 1 lifetime.

Rating:
Summary: Vivid and honest
Review: I couldn't put this book down. I am not an alcoholic, but am married to one with 18 years of sobriety, and I'm also the daughter of an active alcoholic. This book gave me so much appreciation for what my husband went through in becoming sober, and also compassion for my mother. I think this book will change me forever, and I am thankful to Caroline Knapp for writing it.

Rating:
Summary: Unbearably Dull
Review: By carefully sticking to the AA party line, Knapp never takes responsibility for herself nor seriously examines the causes of her drinking--except, essentially (naturally?), to blame her father. Knapp, like Susan Cheever in her own equally trite memoir, is concerned with weaving a delicate web of self-absolution. It's not like I prefer "blood and guts" memoirs, a la "Permanent Midnight)--which in fact I equally detested. It's that these reams of memoirs actually deliver the opposite of what they say, and strike me as deeply dishonest and smoothed over accounts, carefully edited to show the author in only the best possible light. Sort of the story of the BoBo's who are writing all these things: the "Most Useless Generation" just cannot accept its own essential unimportance in history, and come up with self-flagellating media stars to fill the void instead. No, no no: read "The Lost Weekend" instead--not the movie, the book. Buy it here, at Amazon. You'll be glad you did.

Rating:
Summary: A blah book
Review: The book is interesting because the author writes well about the subject, but then it just keeps repeating the same point over and over...shes a closet alcoholic and its so hard to stop drinking and so on and so on. I didn't even bother to read to the end; the ending was so predicatable, she would stop drinking. Maybe I wasn't so keen on the book because I do not know what it feels like to be an alcoholic and I can't relate, but this book lost my interest after the first 70 pages.

Rating:
Summary: Thank you, Caroline
Review: Week after week my therapist tried to tell me I was an alcoholic. It wasn't until she handed me Caroline Knapp's book -- and I summoned the courage to read it -- that I finally admitted that I am an alcoholic. I saw myself in every word, in every page, in every emotion that Ms. Knapp so poignantly put to paper. Her honesty and unashamed manner, while keeping a sense of humor, made the book a bittersweet, wonderful reading experience.

Rating:
Summary: blecch
Review: A worthless book, utterly fraudulent and self-congratulatory. Finishing it leads to a bad hangover. Skip it.

Rating:
Summary: The same old, same old...
Review: I found the first 3/4s of this book interesting in that it described in painful detail the "highs" and lows of alcoholism. Anyone who's ever had a hangover will appreciate the details--they are for real. What bothered me was the last quarter of the book. It's an all-out homage to AA, which provided, to my mind anyway, a didactic and unappealing end to Knapp's story. I felt that I was reading a mystery novel only to find out the the narrator "pulled a fast one" and unfairly attributed the murder to him/herself without ever giving enough the reader enough clues to solve the problem on his/her own. Despite Knapp's compelling description of her own experience of alcoholism, the book degenerates into the standard AA rant. It's not appealing for people who find the AA program unhelpful. In fact, it adds up to the sort of tell-all stories that one often hears from people who have determined that "religion" or some other sort of cult activity is the answer to all their prayers. Not written for the thinking person, I'm afraid. Given that Knapp is supposed to be a respected writer and journalist, I was very, very disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: A must read for anyone dealing with alcoholism
Review: This book is an extremely well written chronicle of the stages of alcoholism and the feelings and thoughts and actions the disease can invoke. As experienced through the insightful eyes of an intellegent, educated, upper-middle class woman in Cambridge, Mass, the author eloquently portrays her twenty year love affair with alcohol with exquisite detail and poignancy. I was in the beginning stages of alcoholism and this book has been a great reinforcement to not having that first drink. If you are at all concerned about your drinking, you must read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Looking in the Mirror
Review: Caroline Knapp has captured the "secret life of professional female drinkers" with this powerful memoir. Reading this book was a true looking - glass experience for me. Being in my first year of sobriety, I was in tears by the second chapter, as she exposed one raw nerve after another. The book has had a profoundly positive effect upon my sobriey and I believe it is a wonderful tool for any woman who is in the early steps of her recovery journey. Thank you Caroline!

Rating:
Summary: Well-written Memoir!
Review: A well-written story of drinking...and its consequences. A modern...Lost Weekend! This is from a female perspective. I just read "Perambulations" by C S Back- similar tale from a male viewpoint!