Kate Holden

This is not, by any means, your traditional autobiographical piece - it is open, stark, revealing, compromising, sexy and at times painful. It is also honest and self effacing, beautiful and lonely, challenging and absorbing.

The heat, the grime and the splendor of Rome seduces you as expertly as the Italians themselves...

Well written, succinct and straight to the point. Here's one to make the hairs on any "normal", middle class, classically educated girl's neck stand on end. It's a sickening account of the horrors of heroin addiction, but one worth reading if you can stomach it. Reading this book was an essential part of my education in the university of life.

Kate completed a degree at university and from a shy, bookish background with a loving family she started to use heroin recreationally. She tells us that no-one forced her to start using but she wanted to....just once , to know.

She describes the early days with a beautiful boyfriend who then disappears from her life and goes into rehab. Alone she drifts, using heroin, holds down a job, visits her family but then she begins to steal from both. Soon she has no option but to hit the streets. show more This world is a very dangerous one and she then moves to the safety of inner city brothels of varying price and class. The bulk of the book recounts these experiences. This is a very confronting read and she holds nothing back.
In her own admission she finds her experiences 'empowering' building self esteem from her desirability.
I found this engrossing about a world I knew nothing about and insightful into the darker underbelly of urban Australian life.
I enjoyed the intimate writing style and the only reservation I have is the relative ease at which she was able to leave this period of her life especially that of her dependence on drugs. It just seemed a bit too easy and unbelievable. show less

This book was interesting to me because I was at primary school with the author and have had heroin addiction in my family. No disrespect to the book is intended, but all heroin addiction stories seem to me much the same. The stuff seems to take control of people, make them do anything for a 'taste'. It doesn't make people stupid (except in their judgement of how well they are concealing their habits from others) and they can still use their skills and cleverness -- to score more heroin. For show more me the more interesting part of the book was the author's description of the inner workings of brothels and the sex-industry in Melbourne. The book was dispassionate (maybe too much?) and quite well-written. show less