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October 05
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Nicole Criona
gave
 
to:
The Alcoholic (Hardcover)
by Dean Haspiel
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in October, 2008, has a copy to sell/swap
Nicole said:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
The book starts out with with Johnathan waking up in an elderly homeless dwarf-woman's car, that I think was supposed to be the beginning of his 'hitting bottom', the one that brings an alcoholic to the realization that they need help and it's time to stop. We are then taken through a series of flashbacks of his life including his first homosexual experience with his best friend in high school who promptly dumps him, his first sexual experience with a girl who promptly dumps him, a brief 3-page college experience where he "...vomited 40 times in 4 years", his meeting a 23-year-old girl when he was 37 which clearly illustrated the characters immaturity and who also dumped him (wisely) and for whom he pined and whined for throughout the rest of the novel to the point of feeling stalker-ish, the death of his parents, his tender but somewhat disturbing relationship with his aunt, a couple of pants-pooping scenes thanks to his struggle with IBS, and lots of puking. Lots of puking.
I think the author set out to communicate the dark and self-loathing side of alcoholism, but ended up with a cliched story about a whiny, self-involved, and ultimately uninteresting writer without a single redeeming quality that made him relateable. Even through scenes after the death of his parents and the despair it brought the character, I had a hard time feeling his pain. The character's inability to sustain a relationship is consistently presented as something that is done to him rather perhaps something he is a participant in (perhaps because he's a whiny self-involved alcoholic that nobody can stand to be around?). Even his relationship with his Aunt, whom he visited weekly, was motivated out of selfish need for a parental figure. I did not feel an ounce of compassion for this "fictional" character, perhaps because there was never really any true self-examination, even through the therapy scenes, which somehow only served to make me feel the character was even more self-involved than previously thought.
In the end, we are left with the character uttering the ever-popular and unreliable alcoholic words, "I will never drink again" because he wasn't there for his aunt due to one of his binges when she was hospitalized. The next and last pane is a full-page drawing of him standing in front of his favorite bar. We don't get know if he will go in again, but this reader is fairly certain he will, and frankly, I don't care what he does, and I really wanted to care.
The best parts of this graphic novel is that it is a cautionary tale to stay far away from self-involved whiny alcoholics, and the artwork. Haspiel's artwork is exceptional....less
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September 27
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Nicole Criona
gave
to:
Kafka (Paperback)
by Robert Crumb
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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September 26
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Nicole Criona
gave
to:
A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir (Hardcover)
by Augusten Burroughs
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in September, 2008
Nicole said:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
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September 19
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September 15
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Nicole Criona
gave
to:
The Time Traveler's Wife (Paperback)
by Audrey Niffenegger
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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August 31
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Nicole Criona
marked as to-read:
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country & Other Stories (Nonpareil Books, #21)
by William H. Gass
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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August 30
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Nicole Criona
gave
to:
Epileptic (Paperback)
by David B.
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Nicole said:
"This birth-of-an-artist graphic novel memoir published in 2005 is an account of the authors French childhood in a small town while growing up with an epileptic brother. The drawing is dense and eerie and fantastical and works well thematically in bl...more
This birth-of-an-artist graphic novel memoir published in 2005 is an account of the authors French childhood in a small town while growing up with an epileptic brother. The drawing is dense and eerie and fantastical and works well thematically in black and white, more black than white, actually. It's like the book, in parts, was drawn in negative space as if it were trying to find itself as well. The story is compelling in that the story itself is self-aware, and makes references to its own creation, shifting between present-time interviews with family members about the making of the book, and the story of his growing up in a family overtaken by the somewhat destructive obsession to cure his brother by nearly any noninvasive (at least physically in the Western sense) means possible, no matter how outrageous. Even the narrators imaginary friends, "ghosts" as he calls them, are really parts of his personality personified and are self-aware to the point where they refer to themselves as the literary devices they are. The authors subtle anxiety over his strained relationship with his brother, his lifelong attempts to understand his both his brother's and his own experience with his brothers disease, and his own subconscious search for himself through his artwork, all roll into a montage of dream sequences that ultimately wind up in a sort of acceptance through understanding that only a shared past, even a turbulent one wrought with continuously shattered hope, can bring - and the reader shares in this experience. In the end, the author takes us along when he gets some sort of glimpse inside his brothers experience, and we find out whether or not the brother has any sort of awareness during his epileptic seizures. A fascinating read that I recommend. If you are just starting to read graphic literary novels (or memoirs, in this case), I wouldn't recommend you start with this this one only because it is very dense. Instead make this your 2nd or 3rd read in the genre, after you get a lighter introduction, after which you will appreciate this book even more.
...less
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August 23
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Nicole Criona
gave
to:
Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper: Gifting the World with Your Words and Stories, and Creating the Time and Energy to Actually Do It (Paperback)
by SARK
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in September, 2008
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Nicole Criona
gave
to:
Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood (Paperback)
by Koren Zailckas
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in August, 2008, has a copy to sell/swap
Nicole said:
"I've been on a memoir bender lately, and sadly for Koren, I started with Augusten Burroughs. He is a hard act to follow, especially on a similar topic. Koren makes ample and often brilliant use of metaphor and simile which makes her prose easy to r...more
I've been on a memoir bender lately, and sadly for Koren, I started with Augusten Burroughs. He is a hard act to follow, especially on a similar topic. Koren makes ample and often brilliant use of metaphor and simile which makes her prose easy to read and she is undoubtedly a talented writer. She does a great job of swallowing us into the many drinking scenes in the book in unique ways, which is tough to do when recounting numerous and potentially derivative drunken episodes. I have to say that I lost interest about 3/4 of the way through the book, perhaps because of the age difference between the narrator and myself, along with a personal disinterest in reading about college 'life', even one with that is a cautionary tale in the form of a memoir. I found the end to be far too preachy even though I agree with many of her opinions and her conclusions. My biggest issue was in the book's preface where she states "...I am not an alcoholic.." In retrospect, this ruined the journey for me. I wanted to discover her "diagnosis" along with her rather than being told upfront what journey I am about to go on. This had the effect of robbing me of relating or caring about the somewhat dismissive consequences of the abuse and I'm not so sure it is the cautionary tale that the author might hope because the end of her journey when she discovers a label for her problem, i.e. "alcohol abuse" and her subsequent decision to "abstain" seemed a fairly easy transition. I think it wasn't, but I just didn't get a deep sense of the weight of the discovery. In the end, I don't regret reading it and am deeply impressed by someone who can complete a memoir and write so beautifully at such a young age....less
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August 13
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Nicole Criona
gave
to:
Manic: A Memoir (Hardcover)
by Terri Cheney
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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