Junkette

by Sarah Shotland

Junkette is the story of Claire Cunningham, a woman navigating disasters— natural and of her own making. Claire is a bartender in pre-Katrina New Orleans, a college graduate whose heroin addiction parallels the swirling fortunes of her sinking city. She knows she needs to get clean, but despite being smart enough to see all the angles, she can’t quite find a way out.

Genres: Fiction

176 pages, Paperback

First published June 28, 2014

Reviews

[Duckoffimreading · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a little mixed on this one. The book itself was short and the writing was honest. Having read a book or three on addiction, I had an inkling where this story would go. It was a mix between hearing the thoughts of a hopeful drug addict and watching the day by day from the sidelines where you know the main character never gets out of the thick of it. The scene with the lice had my own skin crawling. GROSS. Claire will be forever stuck in her cycle - the most boring of boring routines: do the drugs, walking around trying to get more of the drugs, repeat cycle. It was sad, hopeful and hopeless at the same time and probably pretty accurate. New Orleans is the perfect setting for a story about addiction - beautiful once upon a time, a bit grimy and slimy these days and people keep coming back, whether they want to or not.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was EXACTLY what I wanted to read. I fell headfirst into the book and finished it in basically a day, satisfied with my time spent in New Orlean with Claire. My only complaint is the non-ending ending, which generally leaves me less than sated. What happens to Claire!!!!! (I mean, I can kinda guess, which is the point I suppose. Still.)

[Eric Susak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Junkette is a novel about addiction, sans moral imperatives. The addiction itself is not a romantic character. There is (I believe) only one scene where the effects of the drug of choice has a description, grounded in the physicality of it, but otherwise it is simply something the narrator deals with, like taxes and basic needs. This matter-of-factness lends itself well to the novels success. Without the struggle being grand, I found myself accepting the terms. And once I was on-board, Sarah Shotland's narrator quickly drew my empathy.

There were some moments where I wasn't sure if the disorientation was a feature of the drugs or a narrative hiccup, but Shotland does know how to pull the reader along at the right times and end when the story needs to end.

It may not be the comprehensive novel on addiction, but it deserves a place in the conversation.

[Melissa]

DNF (perhaps temporarily, we’ll see) because I’m just not feeling this right now.

[Bill O'driscoll · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine debut novel from Shotland about a college graduate in New Orleans pre-Katrina who's a junkie. First-person narration, artfully episodic, artfully alternating between lyrical passages about life in New Orleans, and life in general, and more matter-of-fact sequences about scoring. Many good character sketches, and a good portrait of a character who senses her own desperation but is never quite hopeless. It's a short novel, not much more than a novella, with an unusual layout that leaves lots of white space between each paragraph (even in dialogue scenes), which makes the pages resemble a poetry collection more than fiction.

[Marcia]

Vivid depiction of the chaotic, workaday world of New Orleans junkies. There's a real writer at work here, and she offers a bitterly humorous, objectively observed, tellingly detailed world. Her characters aren't likeable...she doesn't mitigate their bad behavior with sad back stories...but they are human, especially Claire, with her hopeful envelope of cash, her calorie-counting, her intelligence, her orderly lists. Leaving Claire behind, I hope for a novel about the next phase of her life, where her humanity and her gifts are fully realized.

[KS · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read with a strong first person narrator, Claiire and a rich exploration of place set in pre-Katrina New Orleans with well-crafted yet approachable prose.