So glad you enjoyed it, still waiting to hear back from BelAir on her take on it. Thanks for reviving this thread; I had forgotten it as well.
It's very observant of you that Caroline left the "quitting drinking" bits out of the book, for the whole. Stopping, even for a day or two, when you're a full-blown every-day drinker like she was, is an incredibly agonizing, debilitating, and personalized struggle within ourselves. We stop, and we start, for no reasons that a non-alcoholic could possibly fathom. I respect the fact that she didn't talk too much about the stopping, for those reasons. Rather, she focused on all of the reasons that MADE her drink in the first place -- the pain, the heredity/genetics, the childhood memories, the social conditions, the livelihood she chose as a writer, the men who wandered in and out of her life, the hurt, the self-deprecation and lack of self-respect, etc. I think she knew that the alcoholic in their early stages (unlike her) could be focused to in a more reachable manner, by detailing the "glamour" of drinking that initially lures us in. The early and mid-stage alcoholic that she was reaching out to in her book, still has the possibility to be fully saved, whereas there's so little hope at all once you reach the late stages of alcoholism. Those people, unfortunately, can hardly pick up a book, let alone seek one out specifically, as a way to a cure. Not trying to sound defeatist or pessimistic; I just know from what I've seen with many other alcoholics, and growing up in an alcoholic home and neighborhood, and from my own internal struggles, that it is nearly impossible to help someone once they reach that stage of the game.
I'm so very glad you enjoyed it. Let us know what your husband thinks of it, and if it helps him / speaks to him at all.
Take care.
