In previous posts I've mentioned my West Coast Mother of Mercy, who has been patiently helping me to turn my rambling prose into somewhat readable chapters so I might have a shot at selling my second novel. The mentor in question is one Heather King, sibling of Queers frontman Joe King, and the author of a just-published memoir called Parched, about her years as a barely-functional alcoholic.
Ms. King is perhaps best known for her pieces for NPR's All Things Considered (a couple of years ago she did a segment on going to see the Queers play in L.A.), though she's written essays for a variety of magazines as well, primarily ruminations on spirituality and L.A., which sounds absolutely horrible until you remember that she's a New Hampshire girl at heart; her writing is marked by a bleak New England pragmatism and the fine black humor common to those of us who have spent years braving the hellish winters east of the Mississippi, whether we still live out here or not.
It's this dark and unpretentious humor, along with Heather's charming self-deprecation, that keep Parched from descending into melodrama. Recovering alcoholics have a way of walking around with their sordid pasts pinned to their chests like medals of honor; Heather wears her past like a self-inflicted scar, refusing to shy away from the pain, degradation and embarrassment of life as a falling-down drunk just as she refuses to romanticize that life. Nor does she self-righteously condemn the horrors of addiction from a safe and sober distance, as is so common in these types of stories. Addiction is complicated; an honest story about addiction can't, by definition, seek to shock or preach. Heather doesn't sidestep the temptation to moralize as much as she walks right over it, sneering both at the idea of alcoholic drinking as entailing anything remotely romantic, as well as the notion of puking up cautionary homilies against alcoholism. "It's just so fucking stupid," I can almost hear her say in her thick New England accent.
Heather's writing is outstanding. Parched is incredibly tight; not a word is wasted, and the prose flows effortlessly. Like a great rock and roll song, it is structurally sound, it gives the illusion of simplicity in spite of its depth, and it embodies a passion for speaking to the human condition. True, Heather's my pal, but Parched is still the best book on addiction I've ever read.
Buy it at Amazon.
Or at Barnes & Noble.