I was going to start reading Their Eyes Were Watching God on the bus yesterday but the prose was difficult and I was having trouble focusing, so I started this instead. I picked it up because someone on the Slate podcast (it was either Meghan O'Roarke or Katie Roiphe) I listened to about The Night of the Gun recommended Drinking: A Love Story as an example of a memoir that was a little more insightful about the motivations and emotional implications of addiction, so I picked it up.
It's a good book. It didn't have the same level of drama or insanity that The Night of the Gun had (there are no guns at all in Knapp's story, for one), but I found it more compelling, somehow. Knapp is a different kind of addict than Carr. Carr did crazy things and his life visible began to desintegrate; he lost his job, he was arrested multiple times, he engaged in some pretty significant criminal activity. Despite being a serious alcoholic for 20 years Knapp always managed to at least keep up the appearance that she had her life together. She continued to succeed professionally the entire time she is drinking and very few people, except those she was very close to, even knew she had a problem. That is just more interesting to me for some reason. I guess it is because anyone can just go crazy and screw up their lives but only a very specific kind of person can get blackout drunk almost daily for two decades and still maintain the appearance that nothing is wrong.
Page count: 254
Up next: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
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