Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0525950656, Hardcover)
An extraordinarily honest memoir about the life of a functioning alcoholic and the realities of recovery from a veteran columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times Neil Steinberg loves his wife. He loves his two young sons. He loves his job and his ramshackle old farmhouse in the suburbs. But he also loves to drink, a passion that rolls merrily along for twenty-five years until one terrible night when his two worlds collide and shatter.
Drunkard is the story of one man’s fall down the rabbit hole of alcoholism, and his slow crawl back out. Sentenced to an outpatient rehab program, Steinberg discovers that twenty-eight days of therapy cannot reverse the toll decades of vigorous drinking take on one’s soul. In clear, distinctive, honest, and funny prose, Steinberg comes to grips with his actions, rebuilds his marriage, and reclaims his life.
Unlike outlandish tales of addiction’s extremes, Steinberg’s story is a regular person’s account of the stark-yet-common realities of a problem faced by millions around the world. Drunkard is an important addition to the pantheon of critically acclaimed, bestselling memoirs such as
The Tender Bar,
Drinking: A Love Story, and
Smashed.
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:52 -0400)
Wikipedia in English
Pros: Well-written, raw and honest tale with a palpably somber tone throughout that shows how devastating alcoholism can be to relationships. Steinberg has a way of getting the reader to feel his frustrations and difficulties right along with him. This is not your typical feel-good recovery story.
Cons: The earnestly solemn feel of the story left me feeling drained after reading. Do not read if you want to be uplifted, as truth isn't always pretty. The epilogue, although the bright spot of the book, does little to assuage the necessarily depressed bulk of its preceding pages. (