The Lost Weekend, (Paperback)

from MelissaLenhardt

Well-written, eye-opening, Charles Jackson's The Lost Weekend is a very good book. However, I can't say I enjoyed reading it. I picked it up, put it down, until I finally made myself finish it today. It just isn't pleasant spending so much time inside the head of an alcoholic.

from giovannigf

Of all the novels I've read about alcoholics, I think Charles Jackson's The Lost Weekend (1944) comes closest to giving you an idea of what it's like to be an alcoholic. It's probably only remembered today because of Billy Wilder's surprisingly good movie adaptation, which garnered four Oscars, i...

from Bostonseanachie

This extended internal monologue of a gay alcoholic loose on the streets of Manhattan was in very modern in many ways despite its 1936 setting. Jackson gets very deep into the erratic, diseased alcoholic logic; his depictions of hangovers and lust for alcohol are moving and at times comic. The pa...

from mstrust

Don Birnam is thirty-three, unemployed, supported by his younger brother, and he's an alcoholic. His brother is desperate to block Don's access to liquor, but Don manages to get left behind in Manhattan instead of going for the weekend in the country his brother planned. Don's weekend is spent dr...

from Raven9167

Wow. I can't say I've read many books centered on addiction to begin with, but I also find it hard to believe that anyone has ever written as believable an account of it as this. Don Birnam is clearly a man who is more introspective and sensitive than most, but he is also a man completely beholde...