Pour Me: A Life

by A.A. Gill

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 - driven to dry out, not out of a desire to change but mainly through weariness. He tells the truth - as far as he can remember it - about drinking and about what it is like to be drunk. Pour Me is about the black-outs, the collapse, the despair: 'Pockets were a constant source of surprise - a lamb chop, a votive candle, earrings, notes written on paper and ripped from books,' and even, once, a pigeon. 'Morning pockets,' he says, 'were like tiny crime scenes.' He recalls the lost days, lost friends, failed marriages ...But there was also 'an optimum inebriation, a time when it was all golden, when the drink and the pleasure made sense and were brilliant'.

Sobriety regained, there are painterly descriptions of people and places, unforgettable musings about childhood and family, art and religion, friendships and fatherhood; 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Autobiography, Addiction, Book Club, Food

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Adrian Anthony Gill was an English journalist. He was the author of 9 books, including The Angry Island. He was the TV and restaurant critic and a regular features writer for The Sunday Times, a columnist for Esquire, and a contributor to Vanity Fair. He lived in London.

Reviews

[Amanda Brookfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 to illuminate an original, often complex and invariably overlooked insight, remains unparalleled. I flick through the TV crit these days, missing him every time.

Given such admiration, I was of course interested when he published his memoirs a couple of years ago. I put off buying a copy, however, thinking I would get to it when I had more time. But time is a funny thing. You can run out of it. As happened to poor A. A. Gill himself, caught off guard aged just 62 by a cancer he called 'the full English' and which did for him in a matter of months.

So, on hearing of his untimely death, I went straight out and bought a copy of 'Pour Me: A Life'. I expected to like it. I just had no idea how much. It is not simply the writing itself that is so good - as succinct and striking as his journalism - but also the utter lack of self-pity with which he recounts his addiction to alcohol, offering honest answers instead of easy ones as he tries to account for it. As a personality, A.A.Gill had a reputation for arrogance, but there is no sign of it here. Instead, he explains how every day after the near-death nadir he reached at the age of thirty, when he finally gave up alcohol, felt like a blessing. His writing never ceases to entertain, but a humble gratitude at being alive shines through it; all the more poignantly given how close he was to the end.

The most astonishing aspect of A. A. Gill's achievements and skill as a writer is that he suffered all his life from the most acute form of dyslexia. I had no idea about this until I read 'Pour Me.' Written off as 'thick' in a brainy family, it meant that he had to work a thousand times harder to read, remember and be listened to, storing up every crumb of a fact that fell across his path in order to have an arsenal of information with which to defend and present himself to the world. Even at the height of his drunkenness, he says, he would have a radio on in every room so as to feed his brain with as many useful pieces of information as possible.

Late in life he was asked to return to his school to talk about dyslexia and how he had overcome it. He was terrified. But when he opened his mouth the most wonderful celebration of the power and importance of the English language poured forth. Reading his rendering of it on the page brought tears to my eyes. I am tempted to quote the whole passage, (yes, I always find myself wanting to quote A. A. Gill - see above!), but will limit myself to an edited taster:

"English is the finest language ever coined, so exact and specific it can encompass a universe and split an atom. It is a thing of peerless beauty and elegance. It is heroic and mythic, has the strength to crack worlds and is as delicate and subtle as dew on a web. If you have English in your head you can already think things that people who don't have it don't even know they can't think. And no one can take it away from you."

Hear hear. I miss your words, A.A. Gill. Rest in peace.

[Readosaurus · Rating 1 out of 5]

The last time I read any AA Gill, I was a prepubescent leafing through my parent’s copy of The Sunday Times. I remember being impressed by the acerbity. Now, some 20 years later, the sheer acidity of his prose fails to cover his other stylistic woes. George Orwell, who Gill inexplicably claims to have had a “titanic crush” on at school, tells us, “good prose is like a windowpane” in his essay Why I Write. Gill describes, “glazed windows with curtains, behind which is painted a Home Counties landscape” in one of the dive bars he used to drink in. This is an apt description of his prose although he’s also scrawled ‘Look at me! I’m so clever’ across the glass. Arcane words litter the text but fail to add much to the general meaning leaving the impression they’re only there to show you how much he knows. I looked up ‘octorate’, apparently how spider’s move, on google to no avail. He’s also loquacious and floral but in a self-satisfied way that brings little extra satisfaction to the reader. For example, “they hate it and rant at the propinquity, rage against the intimacy” repeats the same idea two, if not three, times and it seems Gill will never use one convoluted, unclear phrase or word where three or four would suffice. The most farcical example of this is the following, written in praise of omission:

“writing is the art of editing, each of these words is the result of a decision not to utilise, call on, pick, substitute, designate, suffer, frog-march, choose other words”

It reads like he’s copied and pasted from a list of synonyms! Other phrases are ludicrously highfalutin; the remnants of a dinner party left to decay are described as, “the corruption of earthly vanity and fleshly lust”. All without apparent irony! There are also some outright mistakes; “ossuaries of bones” is tautological, “actuary accounting” should be “actuarial”. At other points, this 60 year old man writes like a 16 year old referencing “cranking”, “barfing” and saying “they’re on it. They’re doing shit”. It might be faintly amusing and help to appeal to younger readers in a 500 word piece about a restaurant but in a longer, allegedly more reflective, format it’s clunky. It’s populist, shock-jock prose that sits awkwardly with his attempts at a more refined, less colour-supplement journalistic style. Metaphors are mixed and muddled. Tears ‘swim’ down his cheeks, but swimming is something that takes place in water not something water does. There is ‘an attempt to reconstruct, resurrect the boat that is going the other way’ but if it’s going in any direction then presumably it can’t be resurrected as it’s still afloat! He either wants to turn it around or dredge it up from the ocean floor but not both at the same time while chucking in ‘reconstruct’ for good measure. I’m still wondering what phrases like, “they are pre-National Health, a quaint black-and-white starched wimple rectal thermometer condition”, used in reference to DT, or “the wilful extravagance of a tissue-paper basement bohemianism” actually mean other than being a collection of words the author loosely associates with the concept he’s trying to express. The tone is mean and sneering. In the first chapter alone, we contend with references to ‘dagoes’ and ‘randy fat girl[s]’ but at least these are comprehensible. He’s also snobbish, name dropping his quasi-famous society mates and bemoaning that alcoholism and LSD aren’t what they used to be. I find this fecklessness amazing for a former addict and suspect he’s faking it at some level. He tells tall tales about his pathetic exploits as a drunk with a kind of pride makes me wonder if he’s learned anything except to stop drinking. Gill is the consummate attention seeker; seemingly both in prose and life.

Stylistic gripes aside, I found it really hard to work out what’s going on chronologically in the first chapter. There seems to be almost no structure amidst the sneering, the showing off and the confusing metaphors. It’s like he wrote it as a stream of consciousness. We start off and Gill’s in rehab. He’s thirty and he’s talking about some exercise they do in rehab about being adrift at sea and making choices about getting back to land. So far, so comprehensible. However, he then goes on to say that 27 years later he realised he made the wrong choice. As such, I’m thinking he is 57 when he realises this. However, later on he says the book will cover the period between his time and rehab and the end of his marriage, which is between six and eighteen months. Incidentally, this turns out to be totally untrue; the book seems to cover almost all parts of his life apart from this period. It seems he gets divorced first, then stops drinking in rehab a year or so later. So what of the 27 years? We can only presume that he is NOW 27 years removed from the time when he chose to get married and that the choice to get married is the ‘choice’ he is talking about and not the choice he was confronted with in rehab. Perhaps this sort of vagueness is supposed to pique the reader’s interest but I found it unclear and annoying. It’s like he’s remembered the incident from rehab and written about it but then made only the vaguest attempt to connect it to the rest of the chapter. Sadly, unconnected and rambling rants are all too common throughout the book.

We continue in this higgledy-piggledy way through a hodge-podge of half-baked philosophical observations, autobiographical remembrances and miscellania. All suffused with the ambience of a recalcitrant schoolboy dashing off an essay before a deadline. It’s as if Gill believes he’s so clever and his life so interesting that anything he says will be worthwhile. So what’s the point of thinking about what’s being said or giving it a structure? Of course, structure isn’t essential. The real problem is the material, the observations are commonplace but presented in such a smug, self-congratulatory it’s a nauseating.

The book does improve from the truly shocking start. There are more interesting, and comprehensible, sections on his study of art while at the Slade, a brief history of his family going back two generations and a dissertation on cooking. However, all read like individual essays inserted into the broader stream of consciousness and all suffer from his ‘why use one word when I know fifteen’ approach to writing. None are explicitly linked to the stated subject matter of the book; namely, addiction except for the therapeutic qualities of cooking in his family. Coupled with the insufferable style and propensity to pontificate on subjects well outside his expertise using the same tone of arrogant assertion, it doesn’t amount to good prose. In general, he reminds me a bit of Jeremy Clarkson. He knows about his specialist subject but expresses his knowledge in such a mean spirited way. Both are intelligent and capable of making interesting points but insist on playing the class clown. It’s lowest common denominator stuff; sexism, wild exaggeration, oversimplification of complex issues, racism, xenophobia, outlandish stories, arrogance, name dropping and unsubstantiated opinions presented as facts. Both should really be above such carry-on but are egged on by the class. As the comedian Stuart Lee puts it so unforgettably, “with his outrageous politically incorrect opinions which he has every week to a deadline in The Sunday Times for money”. Anyone wondering why it is so unacceptable for intelligent, privileged people with a public platform to behave like this should watch this part of his stand up routine! I haven’t read any Clarkson since I was about 12 either so perhaps he’s changed, but I very much doubt it. I was most amused when Gill reveals the two are friends, a fine match in my opinion.

Gill also seems fixated on portraying himself as close to penniless throughout the book but doesn’t seem to think it contradictory to mention his expensive education, flats on High Street Kensington, not working and drinking non-stop which all clearly contradict this narrative. I’m not saying they were filthy rich but the idea of him, his father and his brother ‘pooling 30 francs’ to bet on a horse at Longchamp because they had ‘run out of money’ is plainly a ridiculous fabrication. His father was a very successful television producer and director and many parts of the book point to the family’s occupation of fairly elevated social strata. However, as with the outrageous politically incorrect views, Gill must show off and exaggerate at all costs! He also tries to simultaneously claim he is middle class while also working at Tatler, which even he admits is solely for good looking people with trust funds. While his family could be described as upper middle class, it’s clear from the contents of this book, and his job at Tatler, that he is a SERIOUS social climber. His good looks and natural affinity for being a snob probably helped considerably in this regard.

For a brief moment, around Chapter 10, Gill does actually talk about addiction before moving on to more worthy topics like how wonderful he is at journalism, how funny he is and how really it critics who are the lifeblood of the world and facilitate all progress in it. What he says is, for me, far too broad and inauthentic. It’s a sort of caricature of addiction for those who know nothing about it but are interested in it in a sort voyeuristic way. Addicts are this, addicts aren’t this, addicts do this, but addicts don’t do that. It’s as if every single addict were exactly the same and he has knowledge of the whole field because he was once a degenerate with a couple of war stories; most of which sound heavily embellished. He asserts that no addict indulges in self-pity, which is far too general to be meaningful. Of course people feel sorry for themselves, often with good reason, and an addict is no different. He might not feel pity for himself over his addiction, which often has physical and psychological aspects that are hard to overcome, but to assert that it plays no role is simply too broad a statement. In the same vein, we are told “living sober is nothing like as heroically gritty as trying to live stoned and drunk”. Again, that depends on the person, the circumstances and a thousand other variables that Gill doesn’t care to examine. He even goes so far as to say he doesn’t mind if his children take heroin because, “I know what to do about heroin”. It’s hard to express the arrogance and stupidity of this sentence. However, it’s all of a piece; what he wants to do is write something that will shock the non-addict, something at odds with their middle class, Sunday Times view of the world. By turns this can be talking about shitting yourself or claiming heroism for the addict or saying taking heroin is OK. It doesn’t matter, as long as sufficient shock is produced and he’s the centre of attention. It’s tiresome, much like the prose. The exact same motivation lies behind all Gill’s outpourings; he’s showing off and acting for the crowd.

This book doesn’t examine addiction in any detailed or meaningful way. I also suspect it doesn’t really reveal much about Gill’s life. It reads like 100 frivolous pieces for some weekend supplement of the Sunday Times vaguely joined together. He flits from subject to subject telling tall tales and making jokes. The only unifying theme is the desire to shock, to impress, to seem clever or controversial. He thinks he’s hilarious, and even writes as much, but I didn’t even smile once during this book. A consummate show off, he’s always making outlandish claims and trying to show that what others find complicated is comprehensible to him by virtue of his wit and irreverence. He glamorises his addiction and rarely writes about the terrible effects it must have had on those around him. He comes off as a mean, snobbish, arrogant and unpleasant man with a huge ego and far too high an opinion of himself, his views and his exploits, which he admits he largely can’t remember and has probably largely invented. Those hoping for a honest examination of addiction should look elsewhere as this is just a few stories about addiction coupled with a load of sundry material on how great he thinks he is. I had most empathy with the Scandinavian guide who told him, “You’re a cunt”! Just like the glazed pane with the fake Home Counties scenery behind it; Gill shows us a mish mash of fabricated stories through the grubby window of his pretentious prose.

[Jo-Ann Duff · Rating 5 out of 5]

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, hysterically funny book about A.A.Gill’s years as an alcoholic, no pressure!

The book opens with A.A.Gill in a private mental institution after hitting rock bottom at the age of 30. He is told he is an alcoholic and won’t see Christmas if he doesn’t stop immediately. From there, he talks about the times he remembers and the vague recollections of apartments and memories of furniture he may, or may not, have owned Periods of time are jumbled, days and wives are lost forever in the bottom of a dirty, smeared glass and recollections of offending, upsetting and stealing from people are laid bare; there is no sugar coating, no ‘feel sorry for me’, or any shining moment of redemption to be found amongst these pages.

A.A.Gill is a middle class, pompous tw*t at times. He isn’t ashamed of being who he is, and it’s actually what makes this book an addictive read. Who doesn’t want to hear about the seedy hidden bars of London, of those drunks, eccentrics and lushes with money, education and everything they could need and want, yet still they screw it up? Who doesn’t want to hear the story of one of the world’s most renowned food and travel writers waking up after a bender, to find a pigeon alive and well in the inside pocket of his jacket; and that the pigeon lived on the end of his bed with his dog for a week?!

This book does catch a nerve here and there; I wince as I think of those nights where I’ve had one too many, and have woken with a fuzzy recollection and a tummy tight with guilt, but thankfully I am not on the spectrum of alcoholism that A.A.Gill was on. It’s wordy, it’s clever, it’s funny and the author is one hell of a storyteller. There is no preaching in this book. Just a VERY open telling of a sorry, funny, crazy, ruthless time of an intelligent man’s life.

[Gordon Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 whole journey is told with typical AA Gill humour and wit.
We are walked through a series of rooms (his life) that we either believe or not, I chose to believe and enjoyed the journey, warts and all.

[Ben Gould · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 dissent, saying he didn't care much for his stylings at all.

Initially I was staggered, because for me Gill's mastery of the English language and the seeming effortlessness of his writing has always been apparent (and, being a dyslexic, he doesn't even write it, for heaven's sake, simply dictating it all to an editor). But then, as the author confesses at one point in this memoir, he is an insufferable prig, incapable of withholding the slightest nugget of trivia, ever eager to display to the world the magnificence of his accumulated erudition.

I can see why this would put some people off. And indeed, as a frustrated and indolent would-be writer myself, I often find myself dismissing certain authors of a flashy persuasion due to a pathetic but strangely satisfying jealousy. So why does Gill's writing avoid this fate? This memoir confirms my earlier suspicions: it's because of his humanity. Sure, he can fling out devastating barbs and cruelly hilarious brickbats with swaggering ease, but there is generally a depth of feeling to his prose that mere provocateurs always lack.

The best comparison is with his friend Jeremy Clarkson - superficially their writing is similar but ultimately Clarkson has become merely a very effective wind-up merchant, whereas Gill has a piercing, empathetic interest in people. Witness the final couple of chapters here, reminiscing about the extraordinary characters he has met while criss-crossing the globe.

My only gripes with Pour Me are the design and marketing variety - Gill's alcoholism is the peg on which the book is sold, but it's not really the main focus; indeed the timeline merrily meanders and takes in various anecdotes from different points of the author's life, clean and otherwise, and all his life's passions are covered in varying detail. Essentially the structure is minimal; he writes whatever the hell he wants, as readers of his restaurant reviews well know, and the key is that I'm with him wherever he goes, swept along by the ostentatious, dazzling prose. Pour Me offers many tantalising peeks into the man's inner life, and serves as a fitting self-curated legacy for his work. May he rest in peace.

[Basil Bowdler · Rating 5 out of 5]

easily one of the best memoirs I have ever read: by turns lasceratingly candid and remorseful and defiantly unrepentant. Gill writes about addiction with a pain, joy and empathy which is so much more compelling and convincing than the cliches of most redemption arcs. If the latter chapters on Gill as an established columnist and sober dad are less compelling than the topsy turvy of the less than half remembered drunken days then they still pack in plenty of bigotry and wisdom. cheers Kavya for the loan

p.s. really wish I could update with the cover of young pretty A.A. as I think it changes your perception of him so much viewing him as a doomed Nick Drake rather than a balding Sunday Times columnist who races tanks with Jeremy Clarkson

[Lisa Welch · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was given an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review, which is part of why this review is hard to write. I did not like this book at all. When you read the book description, you anticipate the memoir of a man's battle with alcoholism and his journey to recovery. This book in actuality has very little to do with this. Rather, Gill goes on long and rambling tangents (with paragraphs that often take multiple pages), with a pretentious tone that has you needing a dictionary to understand what he is trying to say. I found it difficult to get through, and I think most people I know would as well. I think there are better memoirs out there if you are looking to be inspired.

[Rennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 different in that Pour Me a Life starts out as being about Adrian Gill's alcoholism and turns out to be about so many other different things I couldn't even begin to describe them. I'm also glad that I stuck with it because it didn't grab me at the beginning, so if anyone else has the same experience, keep reading. It gets so much better. Funny, honest, thoughtful, intelligent, strangely relatable - it ticks lots of important boxes that I think many readers look for, consciously or not, in a memoir.

More than his journey through and out of alcoholism, the memoir weaves in and out various phases of his life, including childhood, school, his experiences with dyslexia (fascinating take on this, I've never read anything about it before but his account of his experience and how it shaped his work was enlightening) jobs and careers, relationships and childbirth. I really couldn't care less about accounts of people experiencing parenthood for the first time (or any time after, really) but his story and descriptions were so thoughtful and affecting, unlike anything on that topic I'd read before. I even loved that part of the book and that's saying a lot. I would love to have a nonalcoholic beverage with him and ask his opinion on millions of things. I knew nothing about him before and I think it's the mark of a pretty good memoir when an unknown author can draw you into their world and make you care about them without any prior knowledge.

It's written with such an honest, witty sense of humor that makes his ideas and perceptions so much fun to read. He's a little acerbic at times, but overall the bluntness and his introspection are in just the right amount.

I received an advance ebook copy of the upcoming ebook release (September 6, 2016) from the publisher, Penguin Group Blue Rider Press, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Beth Bonini · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is, with many addicts, the odd feeling that the life they’ve spent using was the real one, that their sober, clean life is somehow a miasma, a mirage, a cheat, a con, or just a stroke of mocking luck. It takes a long time to realise that this is also who you are. There is a fold in my life - a before and an after. And April 1st is the last date before the page is turned. The day of my last drink.

The collecting of pub quiz information is an intellectually insecure nervous tic, the cerebral equivalent of nouveau-riche overdressing for a golf club lunch. It’s assuming a slightly posher accent - something else that I’ve acquired, along with bow ties. Only looking back from my ‘give a fuck sixties’ do I see how much I minded, how hurt I was by being stupid. So I’m barnacled with this thick crust of facts. They are a menial weight, not ballast, just a Sisyphean resentment against my stammering, word-blind bottom of the class-nes.

Those thousands of hours spent learning the wrong thing left me with an analytical eye that combined with a natural scepticism for rooms and groups and relationships. I don’t know a drunk or junkie who can’t decipher the relationships and the power and the insecurity and the vanity in a room. We are alert to the small changes in alliance and humour, we’re so used to being on the outside, of being supplicants and apologists. Mendacious, duplicitous, wounded, we examine minutely and see everything.

Sometime in the late 1990s, perhaps it was the summer of 1997, I spent a wet summer holiday at a damp, cold house in the Cotswolds. We actually had to light a fire in July, but one of the pleasures of that soggy summer was reading the thick Sunday Times for hours on the weekend. I may have been aware of A.A. Gill’s writing before then, but that’s where my pleasure in his distinctive voice - unusual in journalism, particularly in that time - was firmly established. He always had this roundabout way of getting to his topic: a rich and winding path full of diversions, surprising comparisons, throwaway esoterica and far more baroque and rarefied vocabulary than usually features in a newspaper. He was also wickedly funny; he had a sharp eye and a cutting tongue. Since most of his pieces were reviews - of restaurants, or television - they were also roasts. His writing was full of personality, and that personality seemed sophisticated, confident, highly intelligent, intimidating and more than a bit, yes, mean.

I always find it surprising and strange - although perhaps I shouldn’t, not at my age - when there is such a gap between how a person is publicly perceived and how they perceive themselves.

There are two important strands of Gill’s life - his alcoholism, which he got under control at the age of 30; and his severe dyslexia - which inform nearly every aspect of both his life experience and thus the focus of this memoir. They form a prism through which he looks both back and forward. They are at the very core of how he understands himself, and very little of what he relates in this memoir does not relate to one or the other or both.

I reread this book over the course of a year - not because it wasn’t engrossing, but because it was the book I kept at my boyfriend’s house to dip in and out of. It’s an easy book to read in that way, and I think that I’ve ended up reading much of it two or three times. Gill’s life has been an interesting one, but really it’s not so much about his experiences or accomplishments as it is a series of reflections or observations - all of them richly described - of 20th century life in Great Britain, addiction, and the self-education system of what is now described as a non-normative mind.

One of his closing thoughts, as it related to the relationship between his anxiety and addition, particularly fascinated me:

An analyst told me she had a theory that anxiety might be an early conditioned response to boredom, that there are some children who really, really can’t deal with boredom and their attempts to overcome it create anxiety, which of course, is never boring. An inability or a clumsiness to live with boredom is also often an early symptom - or perhaps a cause - of addiction.

His chapters on his religious faith and his fatherhood are both very short - mostly, I think, because he fears being boring or veering into the sentimental. For me, Gill is never a boring writer - and I suspect that I will reread, or at least visit, this memoir again.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t know how much I would’ve liked the guy - at the very least, I think I’d have liked him just about as much as I like myself - but I like the way he looked at things.

Some books compel you to buy plane tickets to remote places and some books give you the urge to pick up a new sport or craft but some books make you want to stay put and do nothing but write. This is one of those books. That’s not to say you’ll be left feeling any happier or more hopeful or certain - it’s more like what I imagine prey animals feel when they lift their heads at the first light that silently reaches across the savannah, knowing that today, once again, they will have to run.

This is writing as possession, as a curse, an affliction, a spasm, writing as penance. It’s imperious and often provocative in an exasperating way, but it’s also clever and observant and never unkind in its rendering of the hurt or the left-behind. It’s an elaborate, steepling non-apology from a dying man who I don’t think yet knew it. And still, chapter by chapter, you never shake the sense of a countdown. I think that’s why it so acutely imparts a feeling of a need to do this, exactly this: to notice things and find the best words for them, to do it prodigiously, incessantly, while you’ve got time on the clock. It dares you to best it, then makes you want to try.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book could be the living example of purple prose. The amount of adjectives, anecdotes, metaphors, etc. that Gill uses to hammer home a single, simple point is mind-boggling. On top of that, much of the content of this book felt unnecessary - the reader is led to believe they will be taken on a journey with Gill to piece together the long stretch of his young adult life that he's lost to alcohol (he states he has no memories of this time). Instead, we are treated (?) to endless ramblings about art school, art itself, the lives of three generations of Gill's family, and on and on.

When writing about his realization that he's not going to be an artist, Gill says: "What you leave out gives the power and the beauty to what is left in; writing is the art of editing, each of these words is the result of a decision not to utilize, call on, pick, substitute, designate, suffer, frog-march, choose other words." Too bad he didn't take his own advice.

[Flapper72 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I probably chose to read this book because I had read that AA Gill had been married to Amber Rudd. I know; a strange reason to read a book but I think that people's choice of partner is quite revealing about themselves and this AA Gill book was all about his addictive life (alcohol mainly) and I thought that that was interesting. Having said that - AA Gill's alcoholic lifestyle was well before he met Ms Rudd. Did I like the book? I'm not really sure. AA Gill is dyslexic, profoundly dyslexic, and his very black and white thinking was very apparent in this book and, perhaps, that's why I found it rather hard. He came across as rather conceited, full of his own importance and really underestimating the effect that his behaviour had on those around him. After a while I got used to that way of writing but, initially, I had no sympathy for him and actually disliked him as a person. As the book revealed more about him the way of writing became more understandable but I still found his personality trait difficult. He recites things factually without probing into how that might effect him (his brother has gone missing - never found or known to be dead or alive), he was sent away to school to be educated due to his learning difficulty (felt that he had been thrown out of the family and then bullied and not really educated in his school) and yet recites these things factually with no probing into the way it may have altered or contributed to his future behaviour. Maybe that's his coping mechanism. Maybe that's what he wanted the book to be - this is how I behaved, this is how I behaved when an alcoholic, end of. I think I found that rather sad. I'm sure that the AA Gill of his latter years wasn't like the man who was an active alcoholic in the first three decades of his life but I found the book rather sad as I can't be sure about that. In the latter chapters he suggested that, once he had children of his own, it forced him to reflect on his own life and be sure that he was going to give his own children a better upbringing than he did. Just a glimmer on his own reflection. I am quite sure he did more than that, far more reflection and looking at his life; he just didn't want the rest of us to be part of it. Facts only!

[Belinda Carvalho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Randomly picked this up in the library, as frequently heard about this writer upon his passing. I'm a bit too young to have read his articles during the heyday of his journalism and after enjoying this so much I'm sorry to have missed them. The book has been marketed as being about alcoholism and recovery but it wasn't really, it's a full on memoir and a really good example of one that shines in it's class.

It is sparkling and witty and you feel pulled in to the story of his life which is very British, ordinary and extraordinary by turns! You feel like you're having an engaging conversation with an eccentric yet fascinating old friend.

I was amazed to learn that he dictated his work due to dyslexia, his writing is beautiful with a masterful command of the English language. I did not however like the chip he seemed to have on his shoulder about teaching, schools and dyslexia but then that's a matter of opinion I suppose.

Great read!

[Phoebe Lowery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal parts. A call to arms to live and love as ferociously as you can. And not to get bogged down by fear in your twenties. Note taken.

[Ben Gutteridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Audiobook)
An arrogant, acerbic barrage of non-stop solid gold absolute fucking bangers piped into my ears. What a writer

[Michael Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite rare that I have the urge to read a paragraph aloud moments after having read it. It happened multiple times while reading this.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewing AA Gill seems like some kind of blasphemy, with the weight of all the words he would have so aptly chosen hanging over my head. So I'll just say that this was a delight, and hilarious, and deliciously written, and you should read it.

[Zoë · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd been keen to read this memoir of the late great A. A. Gill since spotting a colleague reading it on the plane in 2020 - and having left that workplace in 2022 she handed it on to me as a parting gift.

For those who consumed his infamous columns in print's Purple Patch in the 90s, this memoir resurrects Gill's inimitable style, at least in part. You forgave him generalisations, unkindness, insults even, because they were just so bloody funny.

I remember my mother reading his deft turns of phrase out loud from The Style or Critic's Choice of a Sunday and it fed my love of words and reverence for the power of the pen. There's more of the same here; as many flourishes and exceptional bonne mots as you could ask for, only this time strung across a biographical skeleton which is brittle in its vulnerability yet unflinching in its honesty.

There are horrors in the world of an addict, which was the reality through much of Gill's first thirty years, described with such vivid poetry that I could take this book initially only in small doses. He reflects and retrospects across a rough chronology so rich with imagery and dense with bathos and brutality that one must almost read it out loud so as not to miss a thing. There's plenty of lightness too, and it serves to make the substance all the more moving. I found myself reduced to tears several times, feeling a sense of loss throughout. The time we waste. The relationships we don't get back. And the loss of a truly talented writer. I sat for a good ten minutes at the close of the book, processing and feeling the resonance of its closing lines:

"We are... all refugees from the past trying to find a home"

[Ville Verkkapuro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this from a second hand shop for one euro. The name was interesting and I picked it, though I had no idea who or what A. A. Gill was.
I waited a long while to start this as I expected this not to be a very good book. But now I thought could be time for it and I was right. It was wonderful, electric and very honest and brutal and maybe above all funny. It turns out A. A. Gill has done a lot of things but is mainly remembered as a food critic and a writer. You could tell it from the prose – it was delicious and very descriptive, with just the right words, like mawkish etc.
This sells itself as a book of alcoholism and addiction but is mostly about everything around it, before and after. Luckily there is beautiful and deep wisdom in there too.
Maybe I liked this because this was a life of a man that didn't do anything spectacular. Usually biographies read like a CV and I don't care about that too much. This was mostly about... everything else. And maybe my favourite part of this was that he admitted that he doesn't remember too much. That tore a piece of my heart out. A life wasted in being wasted, memories not made because of intoxication. It reminds me of the NOFX lyric: "I want to spend my life having the best of times / Though most of it I'll probably forget". Everything happens for the first time only once.
For me, the deepest wisdom of this book was the moments when I felt that Gill was downplaying stuff. When he says that he kinda remembers something but is not sure.
I fell in love with this book in the way I have fallen in love with life. It left my baffled, it left me unsatisfied. It made me want to start it again, to check some parts with a fresh view, made me forget huge chunks of it.
This thrift shop find ended up being one of my favourite books ever. Easily.

[Dean Lloyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to give this book 3.5 stars because it is better than average but less than fantastic. I enjoyed the book in pieces but in parts I found it infuriatingly opaque. Obviously its a memoir, the author choosing which part of themselves to reveal. However, I find that the best memoirs are those that honestly expose the writer, revealing their authentic world. We never really get past the humour as a defence mechanism or the polysyllabic distractions. Something tells me that Gill never really wanted t show us it all. Leave them wanting more. I think if you enjoyed Gill's columns and other writings then you will really enjoy his obvious wit and charm but sometimes it just becomes rather boorish. A point he may have been willing to make himself.
Enjoyable but better books out there.

[alexander · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started reading this in a hostel in Penang and never got round to finishing it until now. Apparent that the rest of the book was not so much an examination of the crushing effect of alcohol on the author’s life but moreso too long a list of his other pursuits just slightly on the vain side, which I found a missed opportunity (particularly as the beginning talks about the all-consuming danger of excesses, to end on 5 course meals seems an interesting choice). Some parts were entertaining and the writing moves things along easily, in a kind of ancestor to Vice News style but more an exercise in ego. An ok read on a long bus journey.

[LINDEN · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir was sad and, at times, overdetailed but Gill's writing is always superb and often very funny.
Near the end, he declares that he wants to spend the rest of his life highlighting the plight of refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean for a better life. Sadly, he only had one year left.

[Jennifer Barclay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I almost stopped reading around the middle of the book as it wasn't really holding my attention - I thought it just wasn't for me. But then he talked so well about his brother and about dyslexia... and then there was a brilliantly funny section about working on Tatler... And gradually I felt totally won over by it.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good. Really funny, and beautifully written. Hilariously mean at times too, particularly about teachers. I'd heard of Gill but somehow knew almost nothing about him before reading this, so I'll be looking for more now.

[Siobhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never heard of this author before, so I really didn't know what to expect. But this writer was witty, relatable, and quite Charming. I'm definitely going to have to check out some of his other work.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

A moving account alcoholism and its effects, the writing at points is stunning. I was especially moved by the idea of pouring over cookbooks and making meals that is something I would like to do. In part it felt to reserved to be an effective memoir, there was honesty but not enough. Shame was only highlighted to represent that they are no longer like that.

[Ti Tia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lees het voor een passionele ode aan taal als ieders eigen gebruiksvoorwerp en potentiële kunstvorm, waar autoriteiten niets over te zeggen hebben. Hear hear!

[Aidan Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Witty. Had no idea the author passed away in 2016.

[ross francis · Rating 2 out of 5]

he has an objectively fascinating writing process and tells some witty, insightful tales very well, but just not a fan of what he usually has to say

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enjoyable treat of a read.