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A Nice Girl Like Me [Paperback]

Rosie Boycott
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Book Description

5 May 2009
Rosie Boycott wasn't a typical 1960's Cheltenham Ladies College girl. By the age of 21 she had co-founded the feminist magazine Spare Rib and the feminist publishing house Virago, whilst experimenting with drugs, sex and booze. But she wanted more: more experience, more travel, more passion. An epic motorcycle trip through Asia with her boyfriend John Steinbeck Jr. ended in a Thai jail. But drugs weren't her real problem. Alcohol was. Drinking seemed to defeat the demons in her psyche - until it became clear that drinking was her biggest demon of all. How had a nice country girl turned into a drunk? Now a well-known journalist, ex-newspaper editor and chairman of the London Food Board, Rosie made it from the top to the bottom and back again. In this account of her life, she never shirks from the truth about herself - and in her honesty she gives hope to other women with addictions, addressing the hellish predicament of the alcoholic woman with passion and candour.

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A Nice Girl Like Me + Cleaning Up: How I Gave Up Drinking and Lived + Drinking: A Love Story
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Product details

  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Pocket Books (5 May 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1847394701
  • ISBN-13: 978-1847394705
  • Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 20 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 75,506 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Review

`Written with the pacy swing of intelligent literate journalism ... fast and bizarre enough for topselling fiction, but there's the voyeur addition of knowing it's true'
-- Guardian

'A NICE GIRL LIKE ME is the most unflinching personal account of addiction that I have read. First published in 1984 it remains ageless, without an ounce of self pity about it. It serves as both autobiography, and documentary history of the women's liberation movement in the 1970's. Rosie Boycott is generous, brave, and hugely compelling' -- Sophie Dahl

'Beautiful and brutally honest. That perpetual, perplexing question echoes across the decades. What does it mean to be a woman? And how, exactly, do we go about being one?' -- Sally Brampton

'Rosie Boycott has broken several moulds in her life, and one of them was in writing A NICE GIRL LIKE ME, a beautiful, rigorous, and riveting memoir of her drinking years. It is a book written with the kind of honesty and the kind of openness that make you realise what good writing is all about. The book is a classic of the examined life, Boycott's search not only for sobriety but for her better self, and she takes the reader every step of the way on this very human, very powerful confrontation with imperfection. A NICE GIRL LIKE ME is
the world's best antidote to the empty narcissism of the celebrity memoir. The book will mean a great deal to anyone who ever wished they could start again -- which means everyone' -- Andrew O'Hagan

'The book tells of a bright, tough, ambitious girl, one of the many but perhaps more reckless and driven than most, who flipped out of her straight, middle-class background and Cheltenham Ladies College education through a looking glass into what she and others who followed or watched, hoped might be a brave new liberated world. It is the story of growing up the hard way in an easy age, with a round-the-world ticket in one hand, a glass in the other, and fear and loathing down below' -- Suzanne Lowry, Sunday Times

'The most unflinching personal account of addiction that I have read. Rosie Boycott is generous, brave, and hugely compelling' -- Sophie Dahl

'The story of growing up the hard way in an easy age, with a round-the-world ticket in one hand, a glass in the other, and fear and loathing down below' -- Sunday Times

'This is a beautiful and brutally honest book. A young woman's battle with alcohol addiction and struggle for meaning, it's as brave and fresh as when it was first written. That perpetual, perplexing question echoes across the decades. What does it mean to be a woman? And how, exactly, do we go about being one?' -- Sally Brampton

'Written with the kind of honesty and the kind of openness that make you realise what good writing is all about' -- Andrew O'Hagan

`Written with the pacy swing of intelligent literate journalism ... fast and bizarre enough for topselling fiction, but there's the voyeur addition of knowing it's true'
-- Guardian

Review

'A NICE GIRL LIKE ME is the most unflinching personal account of addiction that I have read. First published in 1984 it remains ageless, without an ounce of self pity about it. It serves as both autobiography, and documentary history of the women's liberation movement in the 1970's. Rosie Boycott is generous, brave, and hugely compelling'

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Customer Reviews

3.7 out of 5 stars
3.7 out of 5 stars
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Identification & Accceptance 28 May 2009
Format:Paperback
A recovering alcoholic myself I read voraciously around the subject of alcoholism and attacked this book with vigour. Rosie is a remarkable lady: inquisitive, adventurous, hedonistic and perhaps a little insane. As one who travelled to Istanbul as a student in 1982 to see how long it would take to be offered drugs, I identify with her hugely. I found myself hating her for some of the things she did to people, to herself, before realising that my chronology is in many ways similar. I had to laugh at myself when I realised how alike we are. There were some opinions expressed, some angles on AA that I disagreed with entirely, but that made it all the better for me. I was grateful for the 'update' at the end. It put to rest some of the anxieties I had in earlier pages. Rosie knows what every recovering alcoholic does - that it is a disease which cuts across class. There are probably more alcoholics minding children and 'coping' with high powered careers then there are on park benches. I heartily recommend this book; it lays bare the thoughts and feelings many of us have, but dare not voice, let alone act upon.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Pablo
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
A night nurse at the clinic Rosie Boycott attended described her as "one of the most honest alcoholics I know" and this emotional honesty is the keynote of this autobiographical book. Rosie is very much a straightforward, likeable child of her time from what might be termed an insecure middle-class background. The story starts off in 1981 as Rosie comes off yet another bender to confront her alcoholism in an upmarket London clinic. The book then traces her experience at the clinic while using alternate chapters to explore her adventurous life from 1951 to 1981 with the 1970s being the principal focus. It's a common narrative structure and works well here. Both the clinic experience and and her life story are recounted with the same stark and fearless emotional honesty, and the characters of both stories are portrayed vividly with a marked absence of any judgmental tendency. This is much more than a book about confronting alcoholism. It's also a story of bohemian life during the 70s: a life characterised by experimentation with psychedelic and other drugs, an 'underground' press, nascent feminism and a fascination with gurus and alternative lifestyles. In this pre-mass tourism world, Rosie beats the hippy trail to India, Nepal, Laos and Thailand and experiences sisterhood in a Thai jail. She also samples ex-pat life in a 2-year Middle East contract and all her reports carry the freshness of her honesty and lack of pretentiousness. She recounts well some of the casualties of the decade: one dying of cancer in an Indian ashram, an ex-partner degenerating into paranoia and hacking his wife to death, although cameo appearances of well-known figures of the time (such as Kate Millett or Allen Ginsberg) are uninteresting and lacking in telling detail.... Read more ›
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars A Nice Girl Like Me 18 July 2009
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is not particularly well written, it is sometimes awkward and lumbering and in places downright boring. I do like Rosie Boycott, at least the person she is now. Tell me how many people can actually afford to book into a private clinic to get help - a tiny minority. I consider myself left-leaning, well I read The Guardian everyday! But there is far too much stuff about Spare Rib, water beds, sex - I'm not that interested. Nevertheless, I am at fault for failing to realise the book is a memoir as much as a book about a struggle with addiction and I am simply not interested in most of the memories. This is not a book that would be of any use to an ordinary person who just happens to be an alcoholic. It is, to my mind at any rate, too far removed from ordinary lives. I agree that people from all walks of life fall foul of alcoholism but this book will only be of interest to a small number. Far too esoteric to reach further.
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