A blackout drinker’s memoir as cautionary tale
by Erinn Beth Langille: 
Sarah Hepola gained fame as an American magazine writer and editor, including her turn as Salon‘s personal-essays editor. Now comes her brutally honest memoir, where she’s calling the bluff on the glamour of her once-saucy life. The book follows Hepola from her early childhood in Texas, stealing beer from her parents’ fridge, through to high school parking-lot piss-ups and college ragers—just teen mischief, if the author didn’t make such a case for these being the building blocks of addiction. By the time she reaches her mid-20s, her problem is as obvious to her as it is to her friends, as huge swaths of her life get lost in a terrifying amnesiac abyss. It takes another decade or so, with the help of therapy and AA, to shine a more permanent light on that darkness.
Her account is funny, touching and painful—no doubt set up with the deft and occasionally vainglorious hand of a click-bait pro, but with the soul of something deeper and much more resonant. Through her personal story, Hepola illuminates how the various issues in women’s lives—from body dysmorphia, dieting and celebrity culture, to the pressure of perfect parenting and the work-life “lean in”—are, for some women, mediated, muddied and self-medicated with booze. Especially troubling are the ways in which Hepola links blackouts to rape culture and consent, sure to be one of the more controversial aspects of a controversial book...Read more...
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