Pour Me a Life, A.A. Gill
Pour Me a Life, A.A. Gill
3 Rating(s)
List: $29.98 | Sale: $20.99
Club: $14.99

Pour Me a Life

Author: A.A. Gill

Narrator: Tim Andres Pabon

Unabridged: 7 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 10/01/2016


Synopsis

An astounding and brilliant memoir, A.A. Gill's Pour Me a Life is a riveting meditation on the author's alcoholism, seen through the lens of the memories that remain, and the transformative moments that saved him from a lifelong addiction and early death.

Best known for his hysterically funny and often scathing restaurant reviews for the London Sunday Times, journalist Adrian Gill writes about his near-fatal alcoholism in this extraordinary lucid memoir. By his early twenties, at London’s prestigious Saint Martin’s art school, Gill was entrenched in his addiction. He writes from the handful of memories that remain, of drunken conquests with anonymous women, of waking to morbid hallucinations, of emptying jacket pockets that “were like tiny crime scenes,” helping him puzzle his whereabouts back together. Throughout his recollections, Gill traces his childhood, his early diagnosis of dyslexia, the deep sense of isolation when he was sent to boarding school at age eleven, the disappearance of his only brother, whom he has not seen for decades. When Gill was confronted at age thirty by a doctor who questioned his drinking, he answered honestly for the first time, not because he was ready to stop, but because his body was too damaged to live much longer. Gill was admitted to a thirty-day rehab center—then a rare and revolutionary concept in England—and has lived three decades of his life sober. Written with clear-eyed honesty and empathy, Pour Me a Life is a haunting account of addiction, its exhilarating power and destructive force, and is destined to be a classic of its kind.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Amanda

For years I have enjoyed A. A. Gill's journalism, especially his TV criticism which, much to the annoyance of my family, I often used to read out loud, so eager was I to share his genius with a wider audience. His mastery of the English language, the ability to pick exactly the right words in order......more

Goodreads review by Jo-Ann

Writing this review has taken a long while to get round to! This book is one of my favourites of the year, but Christmas, and the end of the year, made me feel lethargic and I lost my blogging mojo for a while; it doesn’t help that I have to justify a review of a very wordy, intelligent, hystericall......more

Goodreads review by Gordon

I’m not really one for writing reviews but this one spoke to me, it gently took my hand and then grabbed the scruff of my neck and pulled me in, slammed me into the floor, kicked me, slapped me then picked me up and hugged and held me. There were parts I recognise and others thankfully I didn’t. The......more

Goodreads review by Ben

This was on my to-read list before the author's untimely passing, but I was finally pushed to do so afterwards. At a party just before Christmas, a friend remarked on how sad she felt when she learned of Gill's death, and what an amazing writer he was; another friend (a writer himself) expressed dis......more

Goodreads review by Rennie

Totally surprised by how much I loved this! I picked it initially because earlier this year I read and loved Sarah Hepola's excellent memoir Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget of drinking too much for too long, so I was open to something I thought would be similar. These are quite di......more