I loved Koren Zailckas’ first memoir Smashed because it was not just well-written but inspiring in its rawness and the author’s willingness to admit to dark truths about herself. Plus, while some memoirs are accused of being navel-gazing (not that I mind that), this one could never be, as it lightly wove stats and sociology into the personal story, showing that Zailckas was not alone in her behaviour. Now Koren is sober, but her new book Fury (trailer above) is about the rage that was left when she kissed alcohol goodbye.
According the book’s blurb:
In the years following the publication of her landmark memoir Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, Koren Zailckas stays sober and relegates binge drinking to her past. But a psychological legacy of repression lingers—her sobriety is a loose surface layer atop a hard-packed, unacknowledged rage that wreaks havoc on Koren emotionally and professionally. When a failing relationship leads Koren back to her childhood home, she sinks into emotional crisis—writer’s block, depression, anxiety. Only when she begins to apply her research on a book about anger to the turmoil of her own life does she learn what denial has cost her. The result is a blisteringly honest chronicle of the consequences of anger displaced and the balm of anger discovered.
Fury is out now, and we’ll have more from Koren soon (like, Thursday soon), so keep your eye peeled.
