Minus One: A Twelve-step Journey [Paperback]

Bridget Bufford brings home forcefully what it means for Terry to give up drinking, that it is like giving up the part of herself that she most likes. The fact that her drinking has been so connected with her love and sex life makes it all the harder. The phone call Terry makes to Evelyn in the middle of the date with Holly in Chapter 4, where she is dismayed when she starts to cry, is incredibly moving; I cried right along with Terry. I also found Terry's reaction when she starts doing her inventory and finds some of the smaller stuff the most embarrassing and difficult to own up to illuminating and true. We've all experienced, in some form or another, the sense that the small stuff IS small, but significant nonetheless.

The supporting characters are superbly drawn. Straight, up-tight, middle-class Laura, Terry's first sponsor, is a case in point. So is Holly, who is attracted to Terry but not at heart a lesbian. Bufford's portraits of both these women are nuanced and free of caricature or malice. Terry's brother Alecki, who represents the non-alcoholic who just doesn't get it, is a nice addition for a reader like me, who can see him as a kind of cautionary tale (listen, try to understand even where--especially where--your experience is different and for heaven's sake don't tell someone who knows she/he's an alcoholic that they're not!). While fully conveying Terry's pain and confusion at many of Alecki's responses, Bufford also makes it clear they come from his wanting to protect himself, to believe his sister's "okay," and doesn't have a true problem. That's the part that makes a non-alcoholic reader really think. While nasty and miserable Erica, fellow alcholic and Terry's ex-lover on the way down, provides a cautionary tale of a different sort.

I also enjoyed the full evocation of Terry's erotic world, of the sports teams and lesbian bars in which Terry has made so much of her mark. Bufford is a master at portraying the body-mind connection. This novel, more than any other I have read, reflects the truth that our bodies and our erotic selves ARE ourselves.

Though only 26, Terry has already been through a lot in her life. Through her own drunken rage, she lost the love of her life. She's got issues with her family, some of which are because she's lesbian, but also because she was such a wild girl, and her connections with her brothers and parents have been affected by all the lies and failures. She flunked out of school, ran with a fast crowd, and did a lot of risky things. She knows the addiction to drugs and alcohol is terrible for her health and well-being, but she for a long time she kids herself whenever her shortcomings become apparent to others or to her. "These insinuations about my ego just chap my ass," (p. 31) she says early on. This first-person narrator has got a comic voice at times, and the story she tells is, by turns, very funny and very heartbreaking.

It takes a long time and quite a number of mistakes before Terry starts to get her head on straight. For anyone who has ever been addicted, particularly to alcohol, or been around others struggling with the nightmare of drunkenness, every angle of her story rings true. When Terry finally admits that she "cannot take the pain of knowing that I can't trust myself, of knowing the rage and insanity that lurk within me, waiting for the next drink," (p. 122), a glimmer of hope can be found. She still has to hit bottom, learn to connect with others while not high, and figure out how to fashion a life worth living, but with that admission, she is starting to change.

Bufford opens each chapter with a quotation from the 12-Step world, and that's where the title of the book came from: "If there's a minus (step) one, that's where I'm at." But don't mistake this book to be about recovery only. It's a coming-of-age story, a love story, and an entertaining and engrossing journey through one woman's life. I couldn't put the book down and read it in one sitting. I highly recommend it. ~Lori L. Lake, author of lesbian fiction and freelance reviewer for Midwest Book Review, Golden Crown Literary Society's The Crown, The Independent Gay Writer, and Just About Write.