This image is on holiday
India Dowley
Digital Editor-in-Chief
Book: Pour Me by A. A. Gill
Why it’s a must-read: It’s probably not
surprising that A. A. Gill is one of my heroes. I devoured his
newspaper columns when he was alive and can’t get enough of his
anthologies of travel writing, often reading them when on the road
myself – I don’t think anyone describes things quite like he does.
I’ve been meaning to read this exquisitely painful and laceratingly
witty memoir for a while – memoir being the operative word, as it’s
a tale of alcoholism in which many memories have been lost in the
abyss of addiction. Beginning in a rehabilitation dormitory with
six strangers dying in a last-chance saloon, Gill paints vividly
perceptive pictures of the people, places and things he experienced
en route – via some hell-raising parties – to recovery in an
effervescent portrayal of human strength and fragility.