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“An intense, complex, and disturbing story, bravely and beautifully told. I read Drunk Mom with my jaw on the floor, which doesn’t happen to me that often.”
— Lena Dunham
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“While the title suggests a simple autobiographical autopsy
of motherhood marred by alcoholism, Bydlowska’s memoir delivers far more—a
human portrait of the disease.”
— New York Times Book Review
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“This is a memoir that pushes at boundaries—what is private,
what should perhaps be kept private, what we need to know, what we don’t, what
is insightful or just exhibitionism. One of the most talked-about books of the
season.”
— Globe and Mail (Toronto)
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“Bydlowska eschews the touchy-feely language of recovery…The
cool yet raw efficiency of Bydlowska’s prose, a testament to her successful
journalistic career, repudiates indulgence of any kind. This detachment is what
makes Drunk Mom both a painful yet paradoxically
effortless read.”
— Literary Review of Canada
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“To understand this story in the guise of an addiction
memoir is to misunderstand its worth…Instead, this book is fresh within the
context of a parenting memoir, one of a particular kind: a counterculture
parenting memoir…[It] stands as an uncommonly perceptive chronicle of what it
means to be an intelligent, urban parent trying to hold on to the rest of her
life. As a writer she’s got some chops.”
— National Post (Toronto)
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“A compelling, raw look at her struggle with alcoholism, the
addiction that swallowed [Bydlowska] after the birth of her son.”
— Elle (Canada)
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“[A] painfully honest, insightful memoir.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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“Drunk Mom is a
stunning, harrowing read. Why harrowing? Not just because of the dramatic
story, of a new mother at the edge of her tether. And not only because of
Jowita Bydlowska’s skill as a writer, and the crisp, original way she tells it.
What’s most harrowing about Drunk Mom
is that you can’t stop reading it—this, the dark, now-told tale that lurks in
the shadow of every seemingly normal family.”
— Ian Brown, author of The Boy in the Moon
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“A brave, brilliant, and scathing self-portrait. Full of
energy and insight. If Frida Kahlo had been a writer, she might have been
compared to Jowita Bydlowska.”
— Patricia Pearson, author of A Brief History of Anxiety—Yours and Mine
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“Fearless and troubling, and so very humane, Bydlowska
explodes the cutesy momoir genre. You’ll read it in one sitting.”
— Katrina Onstad, author of Everybody Has Everything
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“This is quite simply not just another addiction memoir. It’s
something truly special. I felt this book. It carries the reader. It whispers.
It really is can’t-put-it-down great!”
— Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, author of I’m Kind of a Big Deal, and Other Delusions of Adequacy
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“Jowita is matter-of-fact, funny, fearless, and irreverent
as she lifts the veil to chronicle what it means to be a young mother when both
baby and mother have their own bottles—the shame and the inner voices, as well
as the joy and relief. This book is for anyone who has ever struggled to make
it through a day.”
— Laura Albert, a.k.a. JT LeRoy, author of Harold’s End
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“[A] gifted writer, and a courageous one…Without glibness,
without self-pity, knowing that she risks being judged, Bydlowska tells her
story…Luckily for those reading her story, she possesses a wickedly dark sense
of humor.”
— Gazette (Montreal)