I want fiction books featuring heavy alcohol use.
I don’t mind if it’s in a “let’s party all night life is grand” way or harrowing and miserable. The book doesn’t need to centre around alcohol use, but descriptions need to be vivid.
This post was inspired by watching Leaving Las Vegas and reading Shuggie Bain. I also loved the drinking scenes in Great Gatsby and Brideshead Revisited.
by rhibot1927
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– The Lost Weekend by Charles R. Jackson
The Shining
A Million Little Pieces
How Late It Was, How Late is set in the aftermath of a bender. Won the Booker Prize too.
Bukowski
THE CRACK UP by F Scott Fitzgerald
Walking disaster, Jamie McGuire
The Sun Also Rises – Hemingway
Rules of Civility- Amor Towles
Malcolm Lowry, *Under the Volcano*.
Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles by Ron Currie, Jr.
Perhaps an unusual one, but John Finkelman by Jack London. It’s a mix of dark addiction and humour. Technically an autobiography altough written more in the style of fiction in my opinion. And it features lots and lots of drinking scenes. Written just three years before he commited suicide.
The Patrick Melrose books.
“The Girl on the Train” by Paula Hawkins. Alcoholism plays a large role in this suspenseful thriller, and it causes the main character to be unable to trust her own judgment in a harrowing situation because… well, she’s drunk all the time. It’s handled well, but alcoholism certainly is a starring character in this book
*Ablutions* by Patrick DeWitt is about an alcoholic bartender and the people who frequent his bar. He has what he believes is a magical car that never gets pulled over, no matter how drunk he is when driving, and a wife who seems to have left him. Dark, dark, dark humour. It’s the closest thing to *Leaving Las Vegas* that I’ve ever read. Extremely well written. Very highly recommended.
lucky jim by kingsley amis. it’s from the 60s (?) but still screamingly funny. and a good bit of it is given over to the mmc trying to work out how to drink as much as he wants to drink, on the amount of money he has. there are some very-drunk scenes that are among my favourite depictions of drunkenness ever.
The Drinker by Hans Fallada
the woman who walked into doors by roddy doyle. fmc / narrator is an irish woman processing a very abusive marriage, after the gardi come to her door and tell her her ex-husband/abuser has been shot and killed by them while attempting to rob a bank. she’s an alcoholic and trying to manage it while raising four or five kids.
there is a sequel after she gets sober, paula spencer.
Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine.
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas
Ablutions by DeWitt
Suttree,by Cormac McCarthy. Reading it now and tomorrow is 16 months sober and clean. It’s a degenerate Tom Sawyer story.
Everyone is always drinking in The Secret History.
Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
For a non-fiction book you could try Hungover: The Morning After and One Man’s Quest for a Cure by Shaunessey Bishop-Stall. Guy’s life is ok to start, he goes on a quest to figure out if you can drink as much as you want and feel fine the next day. You can imagine where his life ends up but there are good interviews with doctors and scientists and interesting findings at the end.
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17924465-the-trip-to-echo-spring?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=4qgmZ6GFto&rank=4](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17924465-the-trip-to-echo-spring?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=4qgmZ6GFto&rank=4)
this one is fun
The Golden Orange by Wambaugh. Story of an alcoholic ex-detective, who finally sobers up.
Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree. Denis Johnson’s Angels. Mad Men scripts.
Secret window secret garden
The Ginger Man
“Smashed: A Story of Drunken Girlhood” by Koren Zailckas
No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai 🙁
Drinking: A love story by Knapp
The Fire Dwellers by Margaret Lawrence