Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man: A Memoir - Hardcover

Clegg, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316054674 ISBN 13: 9780316054676

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2010

Synopsis

Bill Clegg had a thriving business as a literary agent, a supportive partner, trusting colleagues, and loving friends when he walked away from his world and embarked on a two-month crack binge. He had been released from rehab nine months earlier, and his relapse would cost him his home, his money, his career, and very nearly his life.

What is it that leads an exceptional young mind want to disappear? Clegg makes stunningly clear the attraction of the drug that had him in its thrall, capturing in scene after scene the drama, tension, and paranoiac nightmare of a secret life--and the exhilarating bliss that came again and again until it was eclipsed almost entirely by doom. He also explores the shape of addiction, how its pattern--not its cause--can be traced to the past.

Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man is an utterly compelling narrative--lyrical, irresistible, harsh, honest, and beautifully written--from which you simply cannot look away.

About this title

Review:

"Beautifully measured and adroitly paced ... mixing a matter-of-fact eye for detail with just enough emotion to unsettle and engross ... Addictive and masterful" (Julian Hall The Independent)

"A gripping, graphic memoir that pounds relentlessly to its climax" (The Times)

"It has the power and precision of the best contemporary fiction. It does what the best writing always does, which is to make Clegg's experience part of your own" (Andrew O'Hagan)

"It's a remarkable achievement when a writer can evoke the most desperate episodes of addiction with the unflinching honesty required to make such a memoir worth reading, yet somehow manage to completely transcend sleaze, sordidness and vapid self-justification. Bill Clegg's story of a man - largely locked in hotel rooms, engaged in a desperate, heart-wrenching battle with himself - is destined to become a cult classic of writing on drug addiction" (Irvine Welsh)

"Beautifully written and elegantly frank... lyrical, funny and shattering" (A.L.Kennedy)

Book Description:

A masterful account of a crack-addict's freefall.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0316054674
• ISBN 13: 9780316054676
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240