I enjoyed this sort of peek into AA and addiction from Mr. Augusten. It's hard to feel empathetic for someone who has a liter-a-day addiction to scotch, when I am in the gutter after a half bottle of my most precious Chandon. And yet, somehow, we are rooting and booing for Mr. A through the whole thing. I wanted him to become sober like a youth group devotee... and happy, even in the face of strange British crack addicts and handsome yet unhealthy hunks.

My largest complaint is that Augusten writes his nonfiction like effortless fiction, and he tends to focus on only the maddest, most outrageous parts of his life. So it's hard to believe. He writes his conversations without a disclaimer like "as I remember," so I have a hard time trusting his confident accuracy. And his life is so wild and over the top, it requires some kind of backing up, or uncertainty. David Sedaris does a good job of this by relying heavily on what he felt, not what was said, to make us trust even the inaccuracy of his memory.

I've been spanked and spanked again by nonfiction coming out as phony pony later on, so I am always unhappy to see confident nonfiction like this. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. Good story either way but...you know.