First published 2018
Leslie Jamison was once a promising young writer whose talents were overshadowed by a crippling addiction. "The Recovering" takes us deep inside her struggle, from her early bouts of drinking to the life-altering decision to get sober. Through vivid personal anecdotes and incisive cultural analysis, Jamison illuminates the complex relationship between creativity and self-destruction. As she reckons with her own past, she also traces the stories of legendary artists and writers whose addictions fueled their work. Unsparing yet poetic, "The Recovering" is a stunning meditation on the stories we tell to make sense of our lives.
Genres: literary-fiction, addiction, autobiography, contemporary, memoir, biography-memoir
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: personal-journey, self-discovery
534 pages · Hardcover · Little, Brown and Company
Content warnings: addiction, alcohol-abuse, depression, mental-illness, substance-abuse