More, Now, Again [Paperback]

The first thing that struck me was how foolish I had been to think she would stroll off into the sunset after Prozac Nation, with all her problems solved. She quickly descends into more chaos & more addiction and frighteningly doesn't see any of this as a problem.

Critics of Wurtzel say this & 'Prozac' are nothing more than collections of self indulgent whining but I beg to differ. Yes, she is extremely self obsessed and self important - yet she cheerfully admits it. It's true that nothing really happens in this book, she moves from addiction to addiction and constantly avoids friends, work and going into rehab. But explosive special effects and twisting plots can be kept for Arnold Schwazzanigger. It's about the quality of her writing and it manages to be both sumptuous and as openly raw as the wounds she carves on her legs.

Half way through the book you feel like banging your head against a brick wall. She just never seems to learn, she is such a coward, screwing herself up, hating it, yet doing nothing to change it. But the fact that she can put it down for everyone to see proves she's acknowledged her own stupidity.

As you've guessed, the book concludes with her clean and looking forward to life for the first time without the grip of addiction influencing her. I can't honestly say that I believe she'll stay straight forever. She was tempted off the wagon hundreds of times throughout her other two books and when you think she's hit rock bottom, she keeps on drilling away through the seabed.

Or will she, like many recovered addicts, get so possessed by self recovery that it replaces the last addiction and is just as destructive.

I wouldn't be suprised if there was another follow up book, sheepishly admitting that it didn't stop there, there had been more madness, snorting, injecting, smoking and general chickening out of life. And if there is, then she can keep it. There's only so far the reader can believe in a character and empathise. But for now, I still care and for those who loved 'Prozac', you'll want to know what she did next

This account of an escalating addiction to Ritalin, then coke, then porn, and ultimately and fundamentally love, is totally gripping, because it's so well written. A celebrated New York writer with a to-die-for apartment and hip friends, whose favourite pastime is shopping, and who admits that however early she goes to bed, it is hard for her to be up and out of the door before about 4-ish, Wurtzel is in the difficult position of trying to make us sympathise with her descent into coke hell. As she says, she had it all, and she 'threw it all away'. The odd thing is, it is such a no-holds-barred account, her honesty becomes compelling. The passages where she describes the speed-addled hours she spent tweezing hairs out of her legs until, at points, she got down to the bone (and the green infected pustules that ensue) forced me to put the book down for a couple of minutes to recover. But not for long though, because I was genuinely interested to see how she resolved this wretched situation. She is totally open about everything -- which at points can be infuriating, for example when she repeatedly describes how attractive she still looks despite being a cokehead -- but this warts-and-all account comes from the heart, and at points moved me to tears. And part of her problem is she is a born attention-seeker, so the writing does backflips to impress you -- she's not thick, and her prose is funny, punchy, has a huge range of reference (including her rather cool record collection), and practically screams 'like me, like me!' at every turn. It is fascinating to see how her Harvard education wrestles with the practical cliches of institutions like Narcotics Anonymous. Eventually she comes to realise that there is meaning in their hokey jargon, checks her cynicism at the door, and gets herself straight. You can't help but be a bit moved by this. I identified a bit too much, perhaps; but if you don't understand how you can be both too cynical and too naive at the same time, you really ought to read this.