Reviews for In the Open: Diary of a Homeless Alcoholic

The average rating for In the Open: Diary of a Homeless Alcoholic based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-11-14 00:00:00 pascual anadon After 30 odd (and I do mean ODD) pages, I started skimming. Then I gave up about page 50. As a former homeless person (who unfortunately knew a lot of homeless alcoholics) I was interested in how Donohue survives. Having to crap is a new and frightening adventure when you're homeless, for example. Unfortunately, hardly any of this is addressed. Most of the first pages were pretentious crap about the nature of suffering. Donohue is not a likable guy and seems not to be honest with his readers or himself (such as bitching about AA and trying to limit himself to half a bottle of whisky per day, which (SURPRISE -- NOT) fails). He also takes a convulated way to tell a story, starting one adventure in February and not picking back up on it until March. Pass. No stars for this book.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-02-29 00:00:00 Robert Crichton This is not a coherent, well-structured narrative. It's a first-person account of an intelligent person disabled by alcoholism. He's an individual. He doesn't represent everyone in his category. Its value is in the intimate look inside the mind of an addict and how he makes decisions. I was especially interested in the lies he tells himself to get different effects. For example, he says, to stop drinking for two days he must *decide* to stop for a month. His description of the pain that drives him to drink is vivid and heartbreaking.