I wanted to avoid this, to simply rate this touching book and be done with it. I wanted to just ignore my compulsion toward emotionally disemboweling myself on the internet. And I've never really been one to write an autobiographical book review, but ... here we are, or here I am. Here I am, in my claustrophobic room; books scattered about, the television set on the main menu of Oshima Nagisa's Three Resurrected Drunkards (the irony there is very much unintentional), dim lamp light, Beethoven so More...

I just pulled my previous review after discovering the author died at the age of 42 from lung cancer. I'd been wanting to find out how she was getting on after ceasing drinking in 1995. She did maintain sobriety from what I know and continued a successful career until her untimely death in 2002.

It is a very well written book, by a skilled journalist, and charts her slow and painful descent into alcohol dependence. As a very insightful account of her relationship with her father it is outstandin More...

I thought this was well done. The book addresses one's relationship with alcohol and the difference between not being able to quit and not wanting to. I think the title is excellent.
Sadly the author's personality led her to various addictions including anorexia and smoking. This supports recent studies noting that many people who have undergone gastric bypass surgery later struggle with alcohol and other addictions, often leading to depression.
Knapp died too young, from lung cancer secondary More...

Inside Information
This book is so well written, and is so honest and informative, it is perhaps the most compelling (and useful) story about addiction I've ever read. Caroline Knapp, an Ivy-League educated columnist and editor, shares the story of her slide into alcoholism and her road to recovery with brutal honesty. Her down-to-earth, conversational tone pulls you in, and paints a very credible picture of someone who goes beyond the singular, self-serving notion of merely writing a memoir. Rec More...

I also recommend this to anyone who feels they are trying too hard to avoid negative emotions.


I just started reading this book, and it's really good. I have to say I'm wondering though at this point if I am a low-functioning human being who would have more success as a high-functioning alcoholic (the author talks about her her professional success was spurred on in a way by the need to conceal her alcoholism.)

I like addiction stories. You've got to serve somebody.

I finished this book last night, More...

Almost done. Picked this up in my supervisor's office to read when i don't have any calls to make or meetings to run. It had some okay parts, but on the whole Knapp's broad generalizations about alcoholics "Alcoholics do this, alcoholics do that, we do this, blah blah blah" got really irritating. So she was/is an alcoholic--that means she can speak from her own experience, but not from EVERY alcoholic's. Plus her writing was just so... trendy.

I appreciated this book for it's honesty and the author's clear desire to describe a condition that affects many people, but without the clichéd trappings of what we think constitutes being an alcoholic. Her personal experiences were real and relate-able, and with the possible exceptions of the specifics of her life - her psychoanalyst father and upper middle class lifestyle spent summering in Martha's Vineyard, for example - she seems just like one of "us".

Knapp was a "highly functioning" alco More...

I seriously considered putting this book down around the 144 page mark--which I rarely ever do--but I managed to get through it. First of all, I have much respect for what Knapp put down for this book. I know from experience that it's not fun to write about such difficult personal moments for others to read. Revisiting and reliving those memories is a difficult task of its own. That said, I found the book frustrating, at times agonizing to read, once I got to the halfway point of the memoir. It More...

very good stairmaster reading...you'll spend half the time being annoyed with this pretentious chick, and half the time wanting a glass of wine/beer/tequila shot. Not that drinking isn't a complicated love story for all of us--but she seems to think her love story with the bottle is on a heathcliff/catherine earnshaw level. Whereas the rest of us are at, apparently, more of a harlequin novel level.

ok--as I've spent more time on the stairmaster with this chick--and on the subway (since she's als More...

In vino veritas the saying goes. Being a wine drinker for years, I can agree and disagree with the common saying. When one drinks to excess, we certainly get very free with our feelings and emotions. I can also disagree with the saying as I didn’t always remember what I said at a certain point.

Ms. Knapp’s book was certainly a rude awakening for me. So many of her stories were simply me. Where will I get that next glass of wine, if I went out to dinner I would have wine before and after the meal More...

moving, sad, and gossipy. being a contemporary of hers living in the same city, it was inevitable that sightings came up with her dog at fresh pond.. she looked wan, and kind. She talks in the book about being smashed at lunch, but being able to function. I once met someone who worked with her, who said, actually, on those days she came back from lunch impaired, she couldn't do a thing, and everyone just let her be. very helpful metaphors throughout "i deserve this now" .. good to pair with Pete More...

So far, my favorite quote is, from the first chapter:

"Trying to describe the process of becoming an alcoholic is like trying to describe air. It's too big and mysterious and pervasive to be defined. Alcohol is everywhere in your life, omnipresent, and you're both aware and unaware of it almost all the time, all you know is you'd die without it, and there is no simple reason why this happens, no single moment, no physiological event that pushes a heavy drinker across a concrete line into alcoholi More...

This memoir is smooth. It's like driving on asphalt. You don't realize how gritty the content gets until you get out of the car and run your fingers along the roughness, harsh and unforgiving. This book is highly recommended for anyone who thinks their drinking is getting out of their control, or who knows of someone who sees someone's drinking begin to careen, or anyone who has been raised in families where alcoholism not only resides, but taps deep roots. Knapp does a beautiful job of letting More...

A reasonably interesting and quick read, with insight into the life and experience of an alcoholic. Kindle quotes:

a workspace so compulsively tidy that one of my staff writers used to say you could fly a plane over my desk and it would look like a map of the Midwest, everything at perfect right angles. - location 241

Sometimes, if we couldn’t sleep at night, he’d set a chair in the hall outside our bedroom and count out loud. We’d listen to the counting and drift off and in the morning he’d tell More...

Excellent memoir. Knapp was a talented writer with gripping style. She clearly had an addictive personality, as throughout this book and Appetites: Why Women Want we see her fall into and pull herself out of poor relationships with abusive men, food, alcohol ... along with smoking, the one she never apparently overcame, as she ended up dying of lung cancer at an unnaturally young age.

This book serves an eye opening view into the world of a highly functional but still trapped addict, and shows a More...

Maybe I'm just a sucker for any book that has "A Love Story" in the title--I'm reading another one now. Nevertheless I loved this book by Caroline Knapp. Talk about cutting to the chase. She begins her prologue: "It happened this way: I fell in love and then, because the love was ruining everything I cared about, I had to fall out." Sounds like the husband from hell, but no, she speaks of alcohol and all the years it took from her, the relationships it strained, and how she finally, after nearly More...

I really enjoyed this smart memoir and recommend it to readers who enjoy memoir, psychological interiority, and the subjects of alcoholism and addiction. Knapp's chronicle of her twenty-year love affair with alcohol is a gripping, sensual read. Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith said, "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." I feel that Knapp successfully let the blood pour into this memoir and that's what I enjoyed most of all. She leads the reader into th More...

If you're from another planet, just a visitor who's never been to Earth before, this book might be interesting to you.

If you're a teetotaler who has never had a drink in your life, and you've also lived all alone in a cabin in the woods for your entire existence, this book might be informative and enthralling to you.

But if you've ever watched a movie or read a book or imbibed alcohol or met someone who has imbibed alcohol, this book is one big DUH.

You mean to tell me that alcohol makes people le More...

Stunning stunning stunning. Knapp's brave and honest account of her alcoholism is the best addiction memoir I've read. Never self-pitying, always beautiful, and razor-sharp in its insight into the psyche of an addict. This is not one of those memoirists bent on understanding the state of alcoholism in America today, interviewing specialists and policy-makers. This is a woman quietly and humbly reflecting on her demons. I've heard complaints that the book is meandering, circling back on itself so More...

Possibly the best book about alcoholism that I've ever read. Caroline Knapp drank for 20 years. She chronicles how and why she started. Her writing is clear, raw and personal. This explains the fear that alcoholics deal with, and helped me understand the alcoholic mindset. The writing was really good and there were tons of facts in here that helped me learn things like-

1. An alcoholic's life generally has a major negative impact on the lives of at least 4 other people
2. 11 % of the US population More...

There were times while reading this book that I wondered at myself- why am I reading a book titled “Drinking: A Love Story”? What does this have to do with me and why do I find myself compelled to complete it? It’s a powerful title that caused me to do a double-take…even then, I wouldn’t have picked it up except that it is written by Caroline Knapp, the friend that Gail Caldwell writes about in her book “Let’s Take the Long Way Home”. I often find that one book I read automatically leads to anot More...

(Getting Better, by Nan Robertson)
She wrote, "I withdrew in other, more subtle ways. My husband used to say, 'When Nan gets bombed, she goes off into some little room in her mind, and pulls down the shade.'"
That line stuck with me for many years. It was quite unlike anything I'd ever read about drinking or drunks, quite contrary to the images of alcohol I'd encountered in the past: the manly and tough drinker, or the smooth and elegant drinker. She goes off into some little room in her mind and More...

It's pretty funny that lately two books have been loaned to me by fellow Balboa teachers, one called "Drinking: A Love Story" about alcoholism, and the other called "My Horizontal Life," a memoir about a woman's various one-night-stands. Not sure what this says about me, or Balboa teachers in general. ;)

This book is pretty great. Caroline Knapp tells the story of her "love affair" with alcohol (maybe a trite metaphor, but she does it convincingly). The book is, of course, about a myriad of probl More...

Quotable:
My mother understood that drinking was more dangerous [than smoking] and she understood why: smoking could ruin my body; drinking could ruin my mind and my future. It could eat its way through my life in exactly the same way a physical cancer eats its way through bones and blood and tissue, destroying everything.

Beneath my own witty, professional façade were oceans of fear, whole rivers of self-doubt. I once heard alcoholism described in an AA meeting, with eminent simplicity, as “fear More...

Though I haven't read Pack of Two, I did read Appetites (as I now recall), and I find it interesting that the writer of each book could be a different person, for the stories are extremely compartmentalized. If Appetites discussed drinking it did not explore alcoholism, perhaps just binge drinking; Pack of Two probably didn't touch on anorexia or alcoholism. Here, Knapp does mention the anorexia but it is explained as a sort of auxiliary-behavior to the drinking.

Unlike the first time I read Dri More...

I picked up this book because I had read Appetites, Caroline Knapp's book about her struggles with anorexia, and liked her style. I won't go into the other book too much here, other than to say that it was lyrical, moving, and triggering, as was this one. I rarely drink myself, but the way she went on about drinking in the first half of this book made me a little thirsty. For this reason, I don't know if it should be labeled "recovery," it is more of a confessional memoir.

Of course, those early More...

at the risk of sounding like a cheesy blurb from people magazine, the best words to describe drinking: a love story are "heart-wrenching," "cuttingly honest," and "inspirational." the title gave me doubts; i thought, "oh, great. another vainglorious memoir about some wannabe drunkard telling 'funny drunk' stories that aren't funny to anybody who has never been drunk."

you know the ones.



not so here.

actually, ms. knapp is deadly serious when it comes to her alcoholism - because it is a potentially More...

For anyone who has ever had a love affair with alcohol, this book will make you cringe, shudder, and rejoice. The author very candidly reveals her history with the bottle, and its effect on her life, especially her relationships. Not just with men, but with her parents, siblings, and friends.
Caroline Knapp was a high functioning alcoholic- she had a great job in Boston as a journalist, was successful in her career, never went to jail, paid her bills on time, etc., etc.
But she drank, daily, a More...

I sought out this book because it is this author who Gail Caldwell writes about in her new book "Let's take the Long Way Home" so I wanted to read Caroline's story first. This book was published in 1996. I have read several books on alcoholism and this is the one I have been waiting for...the one that deals with high-functioning alcoholics, those who DO NOT fit the stereotypes of the fallen-down scruffy drunk with a paper bag on the street. I'm sure the statistics have changed, but at this time, More...

This book prompted me to write a blog. Hope that it's okay if I
reproduce it here by way of a review:

Analyse this!

Recently a friend lent me a copy of Caroline Knapp’s memoir, Drinking: A Love Story, which recounts, in painful detail, her love affair with alcohol and her decision to give it up because it was ruining her life.

Although I have never had the remotest desire to drink to excess and have only once in my life drunk enough to gain a hangover (following a violently eventful Christmas party More...