Drinking: A Love Story
by Caroline Knapp
List Price:
Our Price: $9.04
You Save: $6.96 (44%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.15 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Caroline KnappEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1997-05-12
ISBN: 0385315546
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780385315548
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Drinking: A Love Story
Book Review: Compelling
Summary: 4 Stars
"Drinking: A Love Story" - even the title is compelling. And the first line - "It happened this way: I fell in love and then, because the love was ruining everything I cared about, I had to fall out." And the love to which she is referring is, of course, with alcohol.
And she's right...although I never thought about alcoholism that way before. There are many similarities between this love and the love for someone who seems perfect at first but turns out to be life changing in the most destructive ways.
"I loved the way drink made me feel, and I loved its special power of deflection; its ability to shift my focus away from my own awareness of self and onto something else, something less painful than my own feeling. I loved the sounds of drink: the slide of a cork as it eased out of a wine bottle, the distinct glug-glug of booze pouring into a glass, the clatter of ice cubes in a tumbler. I loved the rituals, the camaraderie of drinking with others, the warming, melting feelings of ease and courage it gave me."
Seductive, isn't it?
Caroline Knapp is painfully honest as she tells her story, seemingly holding nothing back as she tells the reader about her theories on her own alcoholism, about the factors in her life, physical, emotional and circumstantial that may have contributed to this deadly love. While I am very fortunate to not share that love, I sympathized with her many times as she described her life.
"Growing up, I never heard my parents say "I love you," not to us and not to each other. I never heard them fight either. That's something else."
I must have read that line a dozen times in disbelief. While she never describes any physical abuse, the idea that a child grows up not hearing "I love you" several times a day from their parent just breaks my heart.
I once worked with a man who was a recovering alcoholic, and I remember him asking me if I was able to have just one drink at a sitting. I told him I was, that sometimes that drink would go unfinished. He shook his head and told me that he couldn't imagine taking a first sip of a drink and then not ending up blacking out at the end of an evening. So this section resonated with me.
"My mother didn't drink that way. Neither did my sister. They'd have a glass of wine at dinner - a single glass - and if you tried to pour more, they'd cover the glass with a hand and say, "No, thanks. I've had enough". Enough? That's a foreign word to an alcoholic, absolutely unknown. There is never enough, no such thing."
That thought is chilling to me - that once the drinking starts - it never stops.
The description of the elaborate planning that goes into being a "high functioning alcoholic" (as Knapp describes herself) seemed exhausting to me. Visiting different liquor stores each day, making up parties and events to explain the volume of the purchases, hiding booze in closets and plants. Though much of Knapp's story comes through in the carefully strengthening voice of someone who has lived through a nightmare and is carefully rebuilding, sometimes she is able to look at her past life with humor.
"Recycling is a problem to the active alcoholic: you have to see all those bottles, heaped together in the recycling bin, and that can be a disconcerting image. Luckily, I did most of my solitary, alcoholic drinking in communities that didn't then recycle, so I'd pile the bottles into a heavy plastic garbage bag and lug them out to the curb or heave them into a Dumpster, hoping no one nearby heard all the glass clinking and rattling as I went along."
Caroline Knapp's story is a compelling one, a look at the destruction that the love of drink can have on a life, on several lives as she talks to people she meets in AA, on a country as she gives chilling statistics and facts. And it's a story that doesn't have a happy ending.
As the book comes to a close, she is still sober, but she is the first to admit that the odds are against her and that it is a daily, hourly fight to stay that way.
"I once heard a woman say that as an alcoholic, a part of her will always be deeply attracted to alcohol, which seemed a very simple way of putting it, and very true. The attraction - the pull, the hunger, the yearning - doesn't die when you say goodbye to the drink, any more than the pull toward a bad lover dies when you finally walk out the door."
Because, of course, while closed, that door is still there, and can be opened once again.
Summary of Drinking: A Love Story
Fifteen million Americans a year are plagued with alcoholism. Five million of them are women. Many of them, like Caroline Knapp, started in their early teens and began to use alcohol as "liquid armor," a way to protect themselves against the difficult realities of life. In this extraordinarily candid and revealing memoir, Knapp offers important insights not only about alcoholism, but about life itself and how we learn to cope with it.The roots of alcoholism in the life of a brilliant daughter of an upper-class family are explored in this stylistic, literary memoir of drinking by a Massachusetts journalist. Caroline Knapp describes how the distorted world of her well-to-do parents pushed her toward anexoria and then alcoholism. Fittingly, it was literature that saved her: She found inspiration in Pete Hamill's A Drinking Life and sobered up. Her tale is spiced with the characters she's known along the way.
Women Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Women Books
Lopsided: A Memoirby Meredith Norton
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2009-05-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesiaby Elizabeth Gilbert
Penguin Audio; Published: 2006-02-16; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $19.19
Price in other shops:
Epilogue: A Memoirby Anne Roiphe
Harper; Published: 2008-08-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.44
Price in other shops:
Summer at Tiffany LPby Marjorie Hart
HarperLuxe; Published: 2007-04-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.89
Price in other shops:
Why Women Should Rule the Worldby Dee Dee Myers
Harper; Published: 2008-02-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.40
Price in other shops:
Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biographyby Kathryn Spink
Harpercollins; Published: 1997-10-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $16.99
Price in other shops:
Going Rogue LP: An American Lifeby Sarah Palin
HarperLuxe; Published: 2009-11-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.24
Price in other shops:
Model Patient: My Life As an Incurable Wise-Assby Karen Duffy
Harper Paperbacks; Published: 2001-11-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.86
Price in other shops:
Clear Springs: A Family Storyby Bobbie Ann Mason
Harper Perennial; Published: 2000-04-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.91
Price in other shops:
Truth & Beautyby Ann Patchett
HarperAudio; Published: 2004-05-11; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $3.19
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Lit: A Memoir (P.S.)by Mary Karr
Harper Perennial; Published: 2010-06-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
Drug Use and Abuseby Stephen A. Maisto, Mark Galizio, Gerard J. Connors
Wadsworth Publishing; Published: 2010-05-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $110.00
Price in other shops:
A Drinking Life: A Memoirby Pete Hamill
Back Bay Books; Published: 1995-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops:
Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addictionby David Sheff
Mariner Books; Published: 2009-01-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.14
Price in other shops:
Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhoodby Koren Zailckas
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2006-01-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.50
Price in other shops:
Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogsby Caroline Knapp
Dial Press Trade Paperback; Published: 1999-06-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.87
Price in other shops:
Dry: A Memoirby Augusten Burroughs
Picador; Published: 2004-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
Appetites: Why Women Wantby Caroline Knapp
Counterpoint; Published: 2004-03-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.62
Price in other shops:
Unwasted:by Sacha Z Scoblic
Citadel; Published: 2011-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.58
Price in other shops:
Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendshipby Gail Caldwell
Random House Trade Paperbacks; Published: 2011-08-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.50
Price in other shops: