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You Left Early: A True Story of Love and Alcohol
This brutal, beautiful memoir from award-winning novelist Louisa Young is a heartbreaking portrayal of love, grief and the merciless grip of addiction.
Louisa first met Robert Lockhart when they were both 17. Their stop-start romance lasted decades, in which time he became a celebrated composer and she, an acclaimed novelist. Always snapping at their heels was Robert’s alcoholism, a helpless, ferocious dependency that affected his personality before crippling and finally, despite five years of hard-won sobriety, killing him.
There are a million love stories, and a million stories of addiction. This one is truly transcendent. It is at once a compelling portrait of a unique and charismatic man; a bittersweet reflection on an all-consuming love affair; and a completely honest and incredibly affecting guide to how the partner of an alcoholic can possibly survive when the disease rips both their lives apart.
This is a hugely important book – raw and unflinching but also uplifting and elegiac, it should be essential reading for anybody who’s ever lost someone they loved.
Louisa first met Robert Lockhart when they were both 17. Their stop-start romance lasted decades, in which time he became a celebrated composer and she, an acclaimed novelist. Always snapping at their heels was Robert’s alcoholism, a helpless, ferocious dependency that affected his personality before crippling and finally, despite five years of hard-won sobriety, killing him.
There are a million love stories, and a million stories of addiction. This one is truly transcendent. It is at once a compelling portrait of a unique and charismatic man; a bittersweet reflection on an all-consuming love affair; and a completely honest and incredibly affecting guide to how the partner of an alcoholic can possibly survive when the disease rips both their lives apart.
This is a hugely important book – raw and unflinching but also uplifting and elegiac, it should be essential reading for anybody who’s ever lost someone they loved.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published June 28, 2018
107 people are currently reading
652 people want to read
About the author
Louisa Young
27 books170 followersLouisa Young is a history graduate, and worked as a journalist for British national newspapers and magazines for some years. Her first book was A Great Task of Happiness (1995), the life of Kathleen Bruce, her grandmother, the sculptor and wife of Scott of the Antarctic. She followed that with her Egyptian trilogy of novels: Baby Love (which was listed for the Orange Prize), Desiring Cairo and Tree of Pearls. They were followed by The Book of the Heart, a cultural history of our most symbolic organ. She has also published the Lionboy trilogy of children’s novels, written with her then ten-year-old daughter under the pseudonym Zizou Corder and two further children's novels, Lee Raven Boy Thief and Halo. .
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Her 2011 bestseller My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2011 and the Wellcome Book Prize, was a Richard and Judy Book Club choice, and the first ever winner of the Galaxy Audiobook of the Year. It was followed by two sequels, The Heroes' Welcome and Devotion, and a memoir, You Left Early: A True Story of Love and Alcohol, about her relationship with the composer Robert Lockhart.
Her most recent book is a novel, Twelve Months and a Day.
She lives in London.
http://www.louisayoung.co.uk/about.html
,
Her 2011 bestseller My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2011 and the Wellcome Book Prize, was a Richard and Judy Book Club choice, and the first ever winner of the Galaxy Audiobook of the Year. It was followed by two sequels, The Heroes' Welcome and Devotion, and a memoir, You Left Early: A True Story of Love and Alcohol, about her relationship with the composer Robert Lockhart.
Her most recent book is a novel, Twelve Months and a Day.
She lives in London.
http://www.louisayoung.co.uk/about.html
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
September 12, 2018
I read about the first 20 pages and skimmed the rest. Had this memoir been half the length I might have read the whole thing, but I wasn’t interested enough in the specifics of Young’s decades-long relationship with Robert Lockhart, an alcoholic composer (“Child prodigy? Massive over-achiever? Cultural cliché? Chippy Northerner? Workaholic artist? All of the above?”), to wade through 400 dense pages about their encounters and his treatment. The bare bones of Young’s story were familiar to me because I knew that she and Michel Faber, her new partner, were writing books about their bereavement at the same time. She mentions him in the next-to-last paragraph of this book, adding “I won’t mislead you: grief and love entwine like roses, and never die. They remain with the old and encompass the new. This is what love is – what it was for us. Life does go on.”
[Interesting side note: when Robert was being treated for throat cancer, doctors had to use a pedicle to reconstruct his jaw. Young’s grandmother was a sculptor who assisted Harold Gillies, the pioneer of facial surgery, during World War I, and Young later wrote all about pedicles in her novel My Dear I Wanted to Tell You. I’d just encountered Gillies in Face to Face, Jim McCaul’s wonderful book on maxillofacial surgery! He’s also the subject of Lindsey Fitzharris’s next book.]
[Interesting side note: when Robert was being treated for throat cancer, doctors had to use a pedicle to reconstruct his jaw. Young’s grandmother was a sculptor who assisted Harold Gillies, the pioneer of facial surgery, during World War I, and Young later wrote all about pedicles in her novel My Dear I Wanted to Tell You. I’d just encountered Gillies in Face to Face, Jim McCaul’s wonderful book on maxillofacial surgery! He’s also the subject of Lindsey Fitzharris’s next book.]
May 20, 2019
This is a book for anyone who has ever been or loved an addict, and everyone else too really. Beautifully written and unsparing in its honesty, it charts the course of love, life, grief and hope. Highly recommended. I will be thinking about this book for a long time to come. It's honest, heartbreaking, and strangely hopeful. I loved it.
January 17, 2019
A beautiful, heroic book that must have been hell to write. Young writes the biography of her relationship with genius composer and tragic alcoholic—and eventual mal vivant (thank you Guardian obituary)—Robert Lockhart. A sobering snapshot of the brutal emotional and physical damage alcoholism can inflict, and where true love sits within that.
Favourite quotes:
Inscription:
Inversion of Intervals:
Major becomes Minor
Perfect stays Perfect.
Augmented becomes Diminished.
- From Robert Lockhart’s music theory notebook, 1969
On addiction:
Here is an explanation I was given by a specialist, which makes most sense to me. If a person has (1): the genetic predisposition to physical additions, and also (2): the psychological predisposition to using chemicals to change the mood when they are suffering mental or emotional pain, and also (3): things happening in their life which cause them that mental and emotional pain, then it is likely that enough of that pain will provoke them to use enough of those chemicals for the physical addiction to kick in. – page 107
Is it my fault?
Perhaps both that novel and this memoir represent me clinging desperately to something that protects me from my greatest feat – to whit, that if I allow myself to perceive what many other believe, that an alcoholic’s behaviour is entirely his/her own fault, and that when Robert repeatedly told me that I’d chosen the wrong man he was for once telling the truth, I will be swamped by an impossible toxic flood of emotion because he was in fact a bastard and I am, still, a fool.
- page 202
After one of Robert’s relapses:
I didn’t like anything. There’s a word for it: anhedonia. Same root as hedonist. I wanted desperately to write this story of Robert and me, and the enemy. I knew it was a story worth telling but I’d start thinking about it and I’d start crying — because of all that had happened, and because I couldn’t write it. And apathy was killing me. Depression, procrastination, going back to bed. I was afraid. I didn’t know where to take my poor mind now. It felt so tender; so small and scared. I was all frozen up, the frozen sea within to which Kafka was so keen to take an axe. – page 211
He looked like a Franz Liszt painted by El Greco, or a very old candle, or someone dug out of a peat bog where everything had kept growing on after his death.
– page 214.
Writing our own stories:
Sitting in the hospital corridor I thought: we all confabulate. The difference is that most of us will put together more or less the same observations in more or less the same order and call it facts. But I know that I too have invented what I long for, or even what I can bear, out of whatever I had to hand. – p 218.
On grief:
You are stranded: all the love you had for your dead person has nowhere to go, and it backs up inside you as grief: terrible, rocking, draining, and, unreadable grief. Love which has lost its object. – page 356
On the taxidermy course:
‘Why the hell are you doing that?’ people asked, and years later I realise: I was afraid writing about him would be taxidermy. I did it to show myself what not to do in writing about him. Don’t slough out his innards; don’t pluck out his tongue. – page 374
Favourite quotes:
Inscription:
Inversion of Intervals:
Major becomes Minor
Perfect stays Perfect.
Augmented becomes Diminished.
- From Robert Lockhart’s music theory notebook, 1969
On addiction:
Here is an explanation I was given by a specialist, which makes most sense to me. If a person has (1): the genetic predisposition to physical additions, and also (2): the psychological predisposition to using chemicals to change the mood when they are suffering mental or emotional pain, and also (3): things happening in their life which cause them that mental and emotional pain, then it is likely that enough of that pain will provoke them to use enough of those chemicals for the physical addiction to kick in. – page 107
Is it my fault?
Perhaps both that novel and this memoir represent me clinging desperately to something that protects me from my greatest feat – to whit, that if I allow myself to perceive what many other believe, that an alcoholic’s behaviour is entirely his/her own fault, and that when Robert repeatedly told me that I’d chosen the wrong man he was for once telling the truth, I will be swamped by an impossible toxic flood of emotion because he was in fact a bastard and I am, still, a fool.
- page 202
After one of Robert’s relapses:
I didn’t like anything. There’s a word for it: anhedonia. Same root as hedonist. I wanted desperately to write this story of Robert and me, and the enemy. I knew it was a story worth telling but I’d start thinking about it and I’d start crying — because of all that had happened, and because I couldn’t write it. And apathy was killing me. Depression, procrastination, going back to bed. I was afraid. I didn’t know where to take my poor mind now. It felt so tender; so small and scared. I was all frozen up, the frozen sea within to which Kafka was so keen to take an axe. – page 211
He looked like a Franz Liszt painted by El Greco, or a very old candle, or someone dug out of a peat bog where everything had kept growing on after his death.
– page 214.
Writing our own stories:
Sitting in the hospital corridor I thought: we all confabulate. The difference is that most of us will put together more or less the same observations in more or less the same order and call it facts. But I know that I too have invented what I long for, or even what I can bear, out of whatever I had to hand. – p 218.
On grief:
You are stranded: all the love you had for your dead person has nowhere to go, and it backs up inside you as grief: terrible, rocking, draining, and, unreadable grief. Love which has lost its object. – page 356
On the taxidermy course:
‘Why the hell are you doing that?’ people asked, and years later I realise: I was afraid writing about him would be taxidermy. I did it to show myself what not to do in writing about him. Don’t slough out his innards; don’t pluck out his tongue. – page 374
April 2, 2021
The first 100 pages were a struggle to read, however if you persevere with it, it gets better and more interesting. This book went from 1☆ when I first started reading it to 3.5☆
May 9, 2021
Tänuväärne kogemus kaante vahele pandud, aga kohati jäi mu jaoks eklektiliseks või katkendlikuks. Kuigi autor järgis kronoloogilist ajajoont, siis ometi olid mingid veidrad lüngad. Võis ka muidugi olla, et kuna tegemist on omas ringkonnas tuntud inimestega, siis eeldas autor, et lugejal on arvestatav osa taustainfot niigi olemas. Minu jaoks olid siiski nii autor Louisa Young kui ka tema armastatu ja raamatu peategelane Robert Lockhart tundmatud kujud, asusin lugema puhtalt lehelt.
Kõrge hinne tuli peamiselt tükatise siiruse ja valusa avameelsuse eest.
Kõrge hinne tuli peamiselt tükatise siiruse ja valusa avameelsuse eest.
April 28, 2020
If you are the spouse of an alcoholic as I am, it's tough to find many recent books from the perspective of the spouse/partner. There is the occasional memoir of a famous person who has himself struggled with alcoholism or other addictions. But the spouse's voice seems missing outside of a few small press publications. Maybe that's because many marriages can't survive the rigors, lies and exhaustion of life with an addict. That's why it was a big relief to discover Louisa Young's book about her 30 odd year relationship with Robert Lockhart. They didn't marry until the very end, literally on his death bed, but they had a love that somehow overcame not only alcoholism but throat cancer. They met at university and circled each other for about fifteen years while he had a three year marriage, and she had a baby she raised on her own. Louisa Young evolved from journalist to successful novelist. Robert Lockhart likewise had a noted career as a composer for film and television. He was gifted and charismatic, sort of a Ben Whishaw with a Northern accent, a heavy smoker and drinker. When they reconnected, Young laid down some rules for Lockhart regarding his drinking but not surprisingly to readers, little changed. She later wrote: “It was two and a half years since I’d said I’ll be your girlfriend if you stop drinking and get a shrink. I was still asking the same questions: Am I supporting? Or am I enabling? Do I stick around in hope? Or save myself now? Is this the time it’s going to work?" Lockhart did make efforts at rehab and attended AA regularly, but it seems the biggest effort at maintaining sobriety occurred once he had acquired "wet brain" or Wernicke-Korsakoff's Syndrome with its neurological damage. He had a six month rehab stay, and his journals from that time give Lockhart's own perspective on their relationship and his daily struggles. Still, there would be a few happy years of sobriety before a particularly nasty bout with throat cancer resulted in surgery that took much of his lower jaw. Here Louisa Young really shines as she compares how the world treats cancer patients quite differently than alcoholism patients:
"On the cancer ward, you receive the full symphony of sympathy, in all its unrestrained magnificence – I even got free aromatherapy massages – or would have, if I’d had time to take them up. No longer the demon alcoholic; instead the angelic cancer patient. No longer the co-dependent fool, instead, the beloved carer. To be honest, it was a long drink of water. People bring you cake. You can talk about it to anybody. They might suggest some stupid herb that they think can cure it, but nobody says, ‘I don’t actually think cancer is an illness?’" Those who have a spouse or partner affected by alcoholism will sympathize with Lockhart and Young's struggles. But you don't have to have a loved one with this disease to be moved by the terrific love story that unfolds in "You Left Early." Even though you know that Robert Lockhart is going to die early from the book's title, you'll be surprised at just how devastating and moving his leaving is. Highly recommended.
"On the cancer ward, you receive the full symphony of sympathy, in all its unrestrained magnificence – I even got free aromatherapy massages – or would have, if I’d had time to take them up. No longer the demon alcoholic; instead the angelic cancer patient. No longer the co-dependent fool, instead, the beloved carer. To be honest, it was a long drink of water. People bring you cake. You can talk about it to anybody. They might suggest some stupid herb that they think can cure it, but nobody says, ‘I don’t actually think cancer is an illness?’" Those who have a spouse or partner affected by alcoholism will sympathize with Lockhart and Young's struggles. But you don't have to have a loved one with this disease to be moved by the terrific love story that unfolds in "You Left Early." Even though you know that Robert Lockhart is going to die early from the book's title, you'll be surprised at just how devastating and moving his leaving is. Highly recommended.
August 16, 2018
This is the deeply personal memoir of a long relationship between a writer and a composer who glanced off each other's lives for years and years before coming to rest. The rest was a long time a-coming as the composer, Robert Lockhart, was an alcoholic, and the writer, Louisa Young, was busy bringing up a daughter and developing a successful writing career.
They were almost twins, born in the same month, and met first when they were 17. Lockhart got through numerous women (who got Lockharted), got married and had a son, Young's daughter is not Lockhart's. It was complicated as they say these days, but it was love. Young is fairly unflinching, while sparing the feelings of the living. For example, she has published Lockhart's notes that he made in recovery, which make interesting reading. The funniest note is 32F, without explanation. I urge you to read the footnotes to find out what this means.
Most touching was his love of bird watching. Utterly sad was his father's phobia against travel which meant he never saw his son's various extraordinary triumphs, such as being awarded a double first at Oxford or his piano recitals at Wigmore Hall. We all need our triumphs witnessed by those we love - or they don't feel completely real.
As a composer, he lent airs and grace to numerous films, television dramas and plays. His tragedy was that he knew his alcoholism had blighted what he could have achieved without it - but his achievements were remarkable none the less. Not the least inspiring the devoted love and care of a rather extraordinary woman as creative as him.
I recommend You Left Early (lovely poetic swinging title) to anyone who has ever loved, particularly if they loved someone in the grip of addiction. Some give up because it hurts too much and is too damaging, Young never did unto the very end.
They were almost twins, born in the same month, and met first when they were 17. Lockhart got through numerous women (who got Lockharted), got married and had a son, Young's daughter is not Lockhart's. It was complicated as they say these days, but it was love. Young is fairly unflinching, while sparing the feelings of the living. For example, she has published Lockhart's notes that he made in recovery, which make interesting reading. The funniest note is 32F, without explanation. I urge you to read the footnotes to find out what this means.
Most touching was his love of bird watching. Utterly sad was his father's phobia against travel which meant he never saw his son's various extraordinary triumphs, such as being awarded a double first at Oxford or his piano recitals at Wigmore Hall. We all need our triumphs witnessed by those we love - or they don't feel completely real.
As a composer, he lent airs and grace to numerous films, television dramas and plays. His tragedy was that he knew his alcoholism had blighted what he could have achieved without it - but his achievements were remarkable none the less. Not the least inspiring the devoted love and care of a rather extraordinary woman as creative as him.
I recommend You Left Early (lovely poetic swinging title) to anyone who has ever loved, particularly if they loved someone in the grip of addiction. Some give up because it hurts too much and is too damaging, Young never did unto the very end.
June 29, 2018
This book tells the true story of Louisa and Robert and their time together over a number of decades. Louisa Young met Robert Lockhart at the tender age of 17 at a party, which followed on by many years of an on-off romance. During this time, both of them developed their careers and had children by different people, but were always drawn back together.
For much of Robert’s life he was addicted to alcohol and went through some very turbulent time, suffering many injuries and death experiences. Louisa loved Robert and helped him through these times, often without reciprocation, “he is a bucket with a hole in it. I pour in love; love pours out”
This is a heart-breaking story which really pulls at your heartstrings knowing what emotional turmoil she went through and what she did for the man she loved so much. It has really opened my eyes to the journey that people suffering with alcoholism go on and how this has a profound and devastating impact on those around them. This book will stay with me for a long time.
For much of Robert’s life he was addicted to alcohol and went through some very turbulent time, suffering many injuries and death experiences. Louisa loved Robert and helped him through these times, often without reciprocation, “he is a bucket with a hole in it. I pour in love; love pours out”
This is a heart-breaking story which really pulls at your heartstrings knowing what emotional turmoil she went through and what she did for the man she loved so much. It has really opened my eyes to the journey that people suffering with alcoholism go on and how this has a profound and devastating impact on those around them. This book will stay with me for a long time.
November 16, 2018
What an extraordinary book. Not for the faint-hearted, this love story is tenderly written at the same time never pulling its punches about the effects of alcoholism on the human body and the human heart. Part of me wishes I had read this sooner. I found it upsetting and inspiring in equal measure. I really recommend it.
December 29, 2020
I found this book strangely compelling and beautifully written.
January 10, 2025
A very honest, insightful read and one which loved ones of addicts will massively relate to. However, I felt it was way too long and that made it hard to keep going at times. I also personally felt that finding and including notes from her now deceased other half’s AA workbooks and journals wasn’t ok. He hadn’t shared them with her, couldn’t give permission for them to be used, and it felt wrong to use such personal content. I felt uncomfortable reading these knowing that he had no way of deciding if it was to be publicly shared.
I’ve worked with many family members of addicts (and was previously married to an addict) and the devastation this disease wreaks on so many people around the addict is utterly heartbreaking and devastating. Addiction is a game that the whole family gets to play 😢
I’ve worked with many family members of addicts (and was previously married to an addict) and the devastation this disease wreaks on so many people around the addict is utterly heartbreaking and devastating. Addiction is a game that the whole family gets to play 😢
August 8, 2020
This was an amazing book. It is skilfully and honestly written and a real eye opener in many ways. It is all about the writer's relationship with the man who became her fiancé as he was recovering from throat cancer, a relationship which covered decades and his marriage to someone else and his alcoholism and everything. One of the astonishing things was his talent - he was the composer Robert Lockhart, had gone to Oxbridge at 16 and come out with a double first before becoming a concert pianist and then a composer of film music. Then the talent combined with the alcoholism - the several battles with the disease and then with throat cancer. Louisa Young became his carer finally, and her efforts to get him to sobriety and for them to have the great relationship that seemed to be possible if just out of reach. It really struck me though, that you cannot "save" someone even when you have their best interests at heart. They have to do their own thing. We know this theoretically but this account of Louisa and Robert's life is a powerful illustration of that idea.
January 4, 2020
4.5 stars
Review to follow...
Review to follow...
October 4, 2024
Hästi kirjutatud, ladusalt loetav, rikkalik sõnade valik ja huvitavalt elulised mõtete keerdkäigud. Kindlasti ajuti sünge ja lõputu hädade org, kuid elujaatav. Optimistlik oma pimedas lootuses, et kohe-kohe läheb kõik paremaks.
September 24, 2023
This is an honest memoir about alcoholism and the toll it takes on the alcoholic and people around them. But throughout I wondered what the author saw in her boyfriend in the first place as he seemed quite unpleasant (giving people nicknames often about women's physical appeared e.g. calling a counsellor who was trying to help him a horse and neighing when her name was mentioned), his serial infidelities etc. So the author's devotion to him seemed puzzling to me. I thought it would take been interesting to discuss why women (it's usually women) make such sacrifices for men who wouldn't reciprocate, especially given that the author had her own child who was no doubt affected by all of this. So an interesting book but I felt quite a lot was missing.
October 17, 2019
So raw and honest, this is real life with an alcoholic. I hung on every word, searching for answers and hope. It is a beautifully written memoir of life with a charismatic, talented, flawed man that will make anyone think again about the power of addiction. Louisa is so honest I found it hard to read at times but I found her clear information on how alcoholics become so, and how they so often live, invaluable. Having painful experience of living with 2 generations of alcoholics - which must surely make it my fault - this made me cry, laugh and lift my head up with some understanding. Bravo.
November 30, 2020
This is one of the most moving memoirs I have ever read. It is a heartbreaking love story and shows how we cannot choose who we fall in love with. The book outlines the on/off relationship between novelist Louisa and musician/composer, alcoholic and serial womaniser Robert Lockart. Louisa loved Robert from the moment she clapped eyes on him at the age of 17 and her love never wavered over the next 3.5 decades. She carried on loving him despite his infidelity, marriage to another woman, alcohol excesses, rehab, recovery and cancer. Just as they seem to be on the cusp of great happiness, things turn. This book moved me to tears, many many tears. A tour-de-force of a memoir!
December 31, 2022
The beginning and the end were absolutely fantastic. I am a firm believer that we need more information and writings on those who have been affected by addiction not because they are the addict, but because they love one. This was the first book I read where I felt like “wow someone gets me.” Everything is so addict focused that it’s important to know that the rest of us are important too. And I love seeing that perspective. A lot about the guys life which was less interesting since I had never heard of him and didn’t care about his career. But the parts I loved made up for the parts that I cared less about
December 12, 2021
This was so poignant. But hard to read - not because of the writing (that was superbly executed), but because if you’ve ever loved an alcoholic or an addict, it will resonate strongly. I probably would have finished it a lot sooner if I didn’t have a personal connection with the subject matter… it was probably the best bereavement books I’ve read. Very real, raw at times, and beautifully full of emotion.
October 29, 2019
A dark insight into alcoholism and its effects and how its tentacles destroys so many lives and so much of the good things in life. It was over long. The writer was fortunate in that she did not have to live with Robert, was not financially dependent on him and effectively had choices, albeit difficult. The ending was tragic but inevitable.
July 4, 2018
Day at a Time
An interesting and insightful memoir by the novelist Louise Young concerning her relationship with the musician Robert Lockhart who struggled with alcohol dependence throughout his life
An interesting and insightful memoir by the novelist Louise Young concerning her relationship with the musician Robert Lockhart who struggled with alcohol dependence throughout his life
April 11, 2020
I could not finish this book.
September 27, 2022
Hated this book. Complete waste of time.
December 21, 2022
I liked this book but it is problematic when she states that alcohol is one of the safest drugs. This view is entirely unreasonable and I cannot agree.
January 7, 2023
DNF. Boring. Sick of reading about De Bussy, Schoenberg or any other composer. 110 pages in and I just couldn’t go on any longer
November 2, 2023
Having read Louisa Young’s unsentimental, very moving First World War novel ‘My Dear, I wanted to tell you’ and the follow-up ‘The Heroes’ Welcome’, I expected her memoir ‘You Left Early’ about her decades’ long relationship with the brilliant composer, Robert Lockhart, to be an unflinching examination of life with an alcoholic, and I was not wrong.
At times, the writing is almost too painful to read. Young is extraordinarily honest about the ways in which alcohol slowly destroys the addict: physically, mentally, emotionally. And not only the addict but also the addict’s loved ones. In periods of sobriety Lockhart reflects on his damaged relationship with his son, his ex-wife, his father and his demanding and selfish behaviour towards Louisa. He regrets this terribly; at heart the man is not a monster, though he does monstrous things. Louisa Young also highlights the carer’s propensity to kid themselves that all is going well, that the truth is being told, that alcohol no longer occupies the ‘love of my life’ spot.
This memoir documents the wasted years unflinchingly. Perhaps the reader feels particularly distressed because Lockhart and Young are two prodigiously gifted people who could have been so much happier had addiction not been their ever-present unwanted guest. However, that is not to forget the less well-known thousands more who continue to live with this disease. It robs the individual of their best self, their future possibilities, their fulfilling present, leaving only a foul-smelling past. Beautifully written, thoughtful and honest, this is not a book to read quickly. Too much at once hurts too much.
My thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.
At times, the writing is almost too painful to read. Young is extraordinarily honest about the ways in which alcohol slowly destroys the addict: physically, mentally, emotionally. And not only the addict but also the addict’s loved ones. In periods of sobriety Lockhart reflects on his damaged relationship with his son, his ex-wife, his father and his demanding and selfish behaviour towards Louisa. He regrets this terribly; at heart the man is not a monster, though he does monstrous things. Louisa Young also highlights the carer’s propensity to kid themselves that all is going well, that the truth is being told, that alcohol no longer occupies the ‘love of my life’ spot.
This memoir documents the wasted years unflinchingly. Perhaps the reader feels particularly distressed because Lockhart and Young are two prodigiously gifted people who could have been so much happier had addiction not been their ever-present unwanted guest. However, that is not to forget the less well-known thousands more who continue to live with this disease. It robs the individual of their best self, their future possibilities, their fulfilling present, leaving only a foul-smelling past. Beautifully written, thoughtful and honest, this is not a book to read quickly. Too much at once hurts too much.
My thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.
May 31, 2020
Effie's is an alcoholic her reasoning and excuses of why she drinks are well explained, her inadequate qualities make her seem very real. Although I did not warm to her, a few chapters in Effie's character develops, and I found myself understanding her.
The relationship between her and Theo is well written, at times, tearjerking. The story is about Effie and Theo's lives and the way their closeness changes each other.
I really enjoyed this book.
Hannah Sunderland's writing style is similar to Jojo Moyes, whose books I also really enjoy.
I thank NetGalley, Hannah Sunderland and the publishers for allowing me to read and review pre-publication in exchange for my honest review.
The relationship between her and Theo is well written, at times, tearjerking. The story is about Effie and Theo's lives and the way their closeness changes each other.
I really enjoyed this book.
Hannah Sunderland's writing style is similar to Jojo Moyes, whose books I also really enjoy.
I thank NetGalley, Hannah Sunderland and the publishers for allowing me to read and review pre-publication in exchange for my honest review.
June 27, 2019
This was a really interesting and emotional book. I do agree with other review that it was quite long and went into a lot of sordid details but this was definitely important for Young to share.
I think more discussion needs to be had about addiction/ mental health illnesses and how they’re perceived as almost the fault of the sufferer. Alcoholism is something rarely discussed without some kind of value put on or bias tainting the narrative. In this way, lots of Young’s writing was really useful and true as an exposure of how complex an issue it really is.
I think more discussion needs to be had about addiction/ mental health illnesses and how they’re perceived as almost the fault of the sufferer. Alcoholism is something rarely discussed without some kind of value put on or bias tainting the narrative. In this way, lots of Young’s writing was really useful and true as an exposure of how complex an issue it really is.
July 4, 2019
It’s not easy to write a love story about an alcoholic whose behaviour is destructive to the people who love him. It would be easy to consider the author a fool or to dislike the man she loves for hurting her, which would make it a difficult read. I thought Louisa Young did an excellent job of showing us why she loved Robert Lockhart and of making us love him too. I did think she should leave him for most of the book but I also admired her for having the capacity to love him so much and I shared her sadness for his wasted talent and the happiness they could have had.
November 18, 2023
Listened to this extremely long (over 12 hours) memoir on Audible.
I liked it but definitely could have chopped a few hours out and had the same effect.
Memoir about Louisa who loved Robert for almost all of her adult life-Robert was an alcoholic and Louisa stood by him through thick and thin.
He beat the alcoholism then sadly developed cancer-went through a lot of treatment but sadly died of accidental death after choking on some meat.
Louisa herself read the book she had written and I grew fond of her and my heart aches for her towards the end of the book
I liked it but definitely could have chopped a few hours out and had the same effect.
Memoir about Louisa who loved Robert for almost all of her adult life-Robert was an alcoholic and Louisa stood by him through thick and thin.
He beat the alcoholism then sadly developed cancer-went through a lot of treatment but sadly died of accidental death after choking on some meat.
Louisa herself read the book she had written and I grew fond of her and my heart aches for her towards the end of the book
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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