Customer Reviews

Happy Hours: Alcohol in a Woman's Life

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

HAPPY HOURS is an important study of a major problem that reads itself like a novel or book of stories. Jersild is a beautiful writer, and she shapes the individual stories of these distressed women with consummate care and a poet's eye for details. The information presented is succinct and useful. This book should be standard reading on the subject for years to come.

I appreciate the effort here by the sister of an alcoholic,
a concerned family member who is bewildered and cannot understand the illness.

However, I read the entire book, and I felt this author really
did not uncover anything useful for those who suffer from
addictive, compulsive behavior, or for those who are trying
to help people that do.

Addiction is extremely complex, and the stories in this book just
did not give me any enlightment at all into the behaviour. It seemed straight reporting by an outsider who really does not
understand. To put it bluntly, it was very clinical, and had
very little soul. I know this writer loves her sister, and means well, but this book shows little insight into the very difficult
process of unraveling the myriad reasons for destructive addictive behavior, and truly difficult work it takes to reverse
years and even decades of this behavior in many women who were
denied any sympathy in our society, or any support, since it
was considered so shameful, and such a sign of weakness.

The most valuable part of the book points out the years of hiding
that women suffer from alcoholism in numbers almost as great as
men, and that this was kept a secret. Also that women process
alcohol differently, and suffer harm from it more quickly than
men, but I don't think this is rocket science.

I also thought it was quite interesting that the author points out that AA was founded by well-to-do white males with big egos,
and that it is possible many women have problems with the basic suppositions of the 12 steps. Their big deal is that by relinquishing your personal power, you are admitting you can't control everything. Most women never grow up with these thoughts in their heads to begin with, since most women are taught from day one that they have no power.

I am sorry to disagree with the other reviews, but I gave this
book away.

With "Happy Hours," Devon Jersild has taken her place in the front ranks of American social journalism and literary nonfiction. She has identified, researched and brilliantly set forth a topic of urgent concern-women afflicted with alcoholism-that until this book had remained "invisible" as a distinct and singular crisis in our society. The breadth of her scholarship and personal reporting is prodigious. But perhaps the book's true distinction lies in the quality of its prose. Clear, free from fashionable shrillness and polarizing accusation, precisely phrased and hypnotically compelling, it moves us along a powerful narrative line into a terrifying shadow-world previously known only to its suffering denizens and a few of their friends and loved ones. By shining her beacon of compassion and truth into these shadows, Devon Jersild has taken the first step toward alleviating its many sorrows and dangers. This book will stand alongside those of Rachel Carson, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and Simone de Beauvoir in the literature of reclamation.

I read HAPPY HOURS with a growing sense of relief. At last somebody has looked at a serious issue for women with a strong inside view, and with understanding. Jersild's sister was an alcoholic, and she came to this subject from the experience of despair so familiar to member's of an alcoholic's family. Her slow discovery of the complexity of the issue is part of the book's narrative, which looks at this issue from many angles and incorporates myriad voices. This is a thorough study of a horrible problem, and readers who suffer from alcohol abuse or who have members of their families who do will find enlightenment in these pages.

I was under the care of Jersild for a few years and reading this book reminded me of her great compassion and highly intelligent wisdom she offers to those around her. Jersild is sincere and has both elements of someone who can make a big difference in your life: she exudes both empathy and knowledge. The world definitely needs more folks like this accomplished woman.

I decided to review the top books that my recovery coaching clients and the members of my San Francisco chapter of Women for Sobriety found helpful. Number One is Sober for Good (Fletcher). Number two is Turnabout (Kirkpatrick). The reason I suspect that Happy Hours only rates number three is that the others are easy reads, heavier on personal story, which God knows we need so much when we are trying to figure out how to get sober. Jersild is helpful when you have detoxed and are trying to understand how you got where you are and what to do next. Jersild has no agenda about what approach works. I find this wonderfully refreshing.

If you want to know the next four top books, send me an email, I'm putting a bibliography together.

This book is a "must read" for every young woman. The book is intelligent, an easy read and deals with the subject of women and alcoholism in a realistic and credible fashion.

I was really hoping I would read stories about different woman struggling with alcohol. Instead each chapter has only a paragraph about a woman's struggle and then spends the rest of the chapter discussing and dissecting it. I have not been able to finish the last few chapters because I get too bored while I am reading it.

Happy hours by Devon Jersild, is a book I would recommend to any woman who struggles with drinking at some point in their lives. It is written because AA is tailored towards men. Most recovery programs are, and they are sometimes hard for a woman to grasp the different thinking and tailored approach, alot of twelve step and treatment programs have.

We are unique in our disease, and alcohol effects women in different ways then men. This is described in the book, it tells us how we can learn from stories of other women. I gained strength in reading what each woman had gone through.

Some of the reading is a little technical about statistics and terminology that would be better suited for a chemical dependancy counselor, but I got through that short part and was able to finish the book.

Like most books written by a non-addict/alcoholic, Happy Hours has a lot of good information but really doesn't help someone who is struggling with recovery. Doctors, therapists, anyone who studies alcoholism but is not suffering from the disease themselves can only understand alcoholism in theory; they will never have a true grasp on the disease itself, no matter how close they are to someone who does. I believe the author has done her homework and indeed her statistics bear this out but unfortunately, to truly understand the terrible grip of addiction, one must be suffering from it. This is an illiness that is most successfully treated by counselors and therapists who are in recovery because they have been in the trenches and know the path we walk and the struggles we face. I do not recommend this book to anyone who is new in recovery and is looking for a guide to follow. A good addition to your collection if you already have a head start with some basic beginngers books