When we hear the word “recovery,” especially in conjunction with “literature,” we tend to think of books about alcoholism or drug addiction. But humans bounce back from all kinds of trials, and they do so in ways that defy the traditional arc of addiction: a hero’s journey through denial to rock bottom and back up again.
In those stories, the decision to improve often comes like a lightning bolt, but it rarely does. My own recovery from codependency and alcoholism, which I write about in my memoir Good Morning, Destroyer of Men’s Souls, has felt elusive, devious, and at times quite boring. For me, recovery is a long and constant process. Since I don’t like the word “travel,” I prefer to think of it as a kind of resistance art, the term that performance artists give to work that requires long periods of deprivation, solitude, or pain.
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In my own healing, I have even questioned the use of the word “recovery” in this context, as it implies the recovery of something lost. but I’m not sure I had what I needed to start. some new habits and practices have had to be built from scratch. perhaps for this reason, I am attracted to less formulaic narratives, books that reveal how stuttering and arduous our paths through difficulties often are, how thorough and honest we must be to be healthier, how tender and tenuous it can be. our new peace.
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1. In Carmen Maria Machado’s Dream House, a relationship is, among other things, a shared history or, sometimes, a mutual delirium. In this haunting, sometimes hallucinatory memoir, Machado artfully recounts the story of her abusive relationship with a volatile aspiring writer, who viciously warns her not to write about the relationship, among other things. the book serves as a powerful corrective to the fallacy that queer relationships are egalitarian in nature. and the reader fiercely supports Machado as she finds her way out.
2. chaos by sigrid rausingi searched for years for literary treatments of life alongside alcoholism and addiction, so i was grateful to find rausing’s 2017 atmospheric and melancholic memoir about his brother’s struggle with heroin and cocaine, the challenge and anguish of becoming a temporary guardian for his four children, and the drug-induced death of his sister-in-law. Rausing, Granta publisher and heiress to a Swedish beverage packaging fortune, writes beautifully about the idyllic seaside summers of her childhood in the 1970s and her strong family ties. she doesn’t directly recover from the preoccupation, obsession, or attempts to control her brother or, obviously, the narrative, but she does work her way into a kind of serenity.
3. the outrun by amy liptrotthis story of recovery captures the anguish and self-doubt that comes with the decision to stop drinking. Set primarily in the author’s native Orkney (to which she returns after years of alcoholism in London), the book also explores the legacies of family and geography, and includes exquisite writing on wilderness, as well as the rhythms and natural life cycles in a remote location.
4. Joy Enough by Sarah McColl Diagnosis, illness, and death are typically the three acts in a grieving memoir, and though this one follows the decline of the author’s late mother, Allison, it reads like one long love letter. The reader is invited to witness the joys and struggles of a life fully lived, and to absorb Allison’s idiosyncratic lessons, most centered around the pursuit of pleasure and feeling. When she dies, McColl finds the fruits of that motherly love everywhere in bloom. “When the sun shone, I tilted my face towards it and closed my eyes,” she writes. “God wasn’t everywhere, but she was.”
5. the exuberant sobriety of jardine libaire and amanda eyre ward should I withdraw all my old indulgences? we think as we sober up, despite the fact that when we stop drinking, we usually don’t lead a very glamorous life. this new book argues that a life without alcohol can still be brilliant and unpredictable, decadent, messy and exciting, that it is still possible to be “dirty and wild”, “travel through life” and fall in love without alcohol as fuel. The reminder that sober living doesn’t have to be ascetic or boring is a welcome one for seasoned recovering veterans and newcomers alike, but I think the blueprint here for a life abundant with pleasure could be helpful to anyone.
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6. Beloved by Toni Morrison, Sethe is haunted, literally and figuratively, by the daughter she killed while escaping slavery in this devastating Pulitzer Prize-winning classic. the novel isn’t about recovery in any traditional sense, but it’s one of the most powerful stories I’ve ever read about the cost of survival, the ways the past lives on in the present, and the dark deals we make to get well. with our conscience. this is a book about the abject horror and howling trauma of slavery, but also about how we metabolize the nightmares of our lives before.
7. blackout: remembering the things i drank to forget by sarah hepola blackouts are a special horror and humiliation, and not all drinkers experience them. In this memoir, Hepola shares the science of blackouts and traces his own life as a drinker, zeroing in on the blank spaces where memories should be: piecing together nights out, near misses, bad decisions, and the kindness of strangers, too. Hepola’s tone is usually loose and funny, but she writes with the precision of a journalist and the book reads almost like a thriller. After a particularly harrowing experience in a hotel, Hepola sobers up and the reader realizes that he has been holding his breath for a couple of hundred pages.
8. Jaquira Díaz’s Ordinary Girls A story of survival rather than recovery, Díaz’s memoir tries to unlearn the powerful ideas we were raised with, in this case, that violence and chaos are normal. Díaz writes about her childhood in a public housing project in Puerto Rico and later in Miami Beach, and an adolescence marked by “juvenile delinquency” and marked by violence, addiction, mental illness and abuse. . Diaz’s resilience, and success, in the face of great odds is recorded as part luck, part strength, and part audacity.
9. know my name by chanel miller this should be required reading in every high school. Miller was long known as Emily Doe, the unnamed victim of a Stanford University sexual assault and the voice behind a viral victim impact statement that changed the terms of the debate over consent, violence, and rape. With this book she breaks her anonymity, describing the jarring moment of waking up to trauma and victimization, and the onerous emotional and legal battle that followed. Miller’s candor and her language are impressive. This book shows better than any other I have read the effects of sexual assault and the possibility of forging a new freedom after it.
10. Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth Some of the closest friendships are forged in the crucible of hard partying. This dark, biting, lyrical novel is about one of those friendships, between Tyler and Laura, roommates and codependent hookups. they wonder all the time if they’re overdoing it…and order another round anyway. When the cycle of drugged nights and intense hangovers begins to take a toll on Laura, her bond must be reassessed.
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good morning, destroyer of the soul of men by nina renata aron is published by tail of the snake. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com.
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