Early Sobrieties
A Novel
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4.3 • 10 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
WINNER of the 2025 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel
Longlisted for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
"'Just give me one more day,' Monk says, and Early Sobrieties is such a wise and piercing book that we believe him."
—Charlie Lee, The New York Times Book Review
"Michael Deagler is the real deal."
—Percival Everett, 2023 Windham Campbell Prize recipient and author of Dr. No
Don’t worry about what Dennis Monk did when he was drinking. He’s sober now, ready to rejoin the world of leases and paychecks, reciprocal friendships and healthy romances—if only the world would agree to take him back. When his working-stiff parents kick him out of their suburban home, mere months into his frangible sobriety, the 26-year-old spends his first dry summer couch surfing through South Philadelphia, struggling to find a place for himself in the throng of adulthood.
Monk’s haphazard pilgrimage leads him through a city in flux: growing, gentrifying, haunted by its history and its unrealized potential. Everyone he knew from college seems to be doing better than him—and most of them aren’t even doing that well. His run-ins with former classmates, estranged drinking buddies, and prospective lovers challenge his version of events past and present, revealing that recovery is not the happy ending he’d expected, only a fraught next chapter.
Like a sober, millennial Jesus’ Son, Michael Deagler’s debut novel is the poignant confession of a recovering addict adrift in the fragmenting landscape of America’s middle class. Shot through with humor, hubris, and hard-earned insight, Early Sobrieties charts the limbos that exist between our better and worst selves, offering a portrait of a stifled generation collectively slouching towards grace.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A young man surfaces from the depths of alcoholism in Deagler's pitch-perfect debut novel. Dennis Monk, 26, is seven months sober and determined to reconnect with the community he left behind in Bucks County, Pa., where he grew up before moving to Philadelphia for college. His Irish Catholic parents are skeptical, though, and they kick him out of the house after he fails to find gainful employment. Thus ensues a winding trek across Philly, whose blocks remain awash in Dennis's memories even as the pace of gentrification picks up. Between bed-hopping among new and old flames, he reconnects with friends he'd grown estranged from and takes on odd jobs for which he's semiqualified (after helping a new homeowner remove unsightly shag carpeting, he falsely identifies the uncovered flooring as solid oak). Dennis's years of drinking and working in dive bars and his blue-collar background anoint him with a wizened and wry outlook on the rapidly transforming city (one neighborhood is "quickly becoming another charm in Philadelphia's hipster bracelet," invaded by "the sons of lawyers and pediatricians who aspired to look like the sons of miners and farmers"). Deagler is even better when Dennis looks inward, weighing his precarious liberation from booze ("A substance so wholesome they served it in church"). This is a standout.
Customer Reviews
Excellent writing.
I'm a bit mystified. This is a very well written book. It takes the reader up and down on a long roller coaster ride. Just prepare yourself for constant emotional starts and stops along the rails. Sometimes you'll want the roller coaster to stop. You want some stability. The protagonist seems intelligent enough, but he seems so self indulgent. I'm the mother of a recovering alcoholic. I know it's tough to do. I know they've been cursed with an unfortunate genetic soup. This guy is so introspective at times, really deeply philosophical at times, but mostly he's an opportunistic jerk. I wanted to like him, came close at times, but he always let me down. Just like an alcoholic . . . So. Excellent job! You hit the nail on the head.