Pour Me
A Life
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4.4 • 9 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 PEN ACKERLEY PRIZE
'An intense, succulent read that's intermittently dazzling' THE TIMES
'Chilling, exquisitely moving' DAILY TELEGRAPH
'A superb memoir - and one of the best books on addiction I have ever read' EVENING STANDARD
A. A. Gill's memoir begins in the dark of a dormitory with six strangers. He is an alcoholic, dying in the last-chance saloon. He tells the truth - as far as he can remember it - about drinking and about what it is like to be drunk. He recalls the lost days, lost friends, failed marriages ... But there was also an 'optimum inebriation, a time when it was all golden'.
Sobriety regained, there are painterly descriptions of people and places, unforgettable musings about childhood and family, art and religion; and most movingly, the connections between his cooking, dyslexia and his missing brother.
Full of raw and unvarnished truths, exquisitely written throughout, POUR ME is about lost time and self-discovery. Lacerating, unflinching, uplifting, it is a classic about drunken abandon.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British journalist Gill lays everything on the line in this honest, if disjointed, memoir of a drinking life. His readers are used to his biting wit and endless jabs in the Sunday Times, but this may be the first time his barbs are so publicly pointed at himself. Through the shards of his own jagged memory, Gill describes piecing together his life after subjecting his body to drugs and alcohol. The story skips around between "the end of a marriage and the end of drinking." His last drink was decades ago on his way to rehab: a glass of Champagne with his father. Drinking strips away memory, so the timing of events is askew, with individual scenes like "fragments from sagas found stuffed in a mattress," but when Gill locks into a moment, especially one from his years as a young, destructive drunk, readers are brought face to face with a gripping truth. Gill's story holds up a mirror with which to evaluate one's own ugly and beautiful jaunts through life. His is not a tale told with a clear beginning, middle, or end; it is, however, chock full of wit and humanity, and enhanced by Gill's striking gift for prose.
