Completed Dry January? Reading fiction can help newly sober mothers decide what’s next

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With the arrival of high-speed home delivery companies, alcohol became more readily and rapidly available than ever before.

Metadata

Provider:

The Conversation

URL:

https://theconversation.com/completed-dry-january-reading-fiction-can-help-newly-sober-mothers-decide-whats-next-222299

Retrieved on:

Monday, February 5, 2024

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Tags:

Book, Sherwood Anderson, Parent, Life, Mother, Fear, Breakfast, Noise, Politics, Literature, Child, Tenderness, Collection, Drinking, Hope, Fatigue, Stroke, Wine, Woman, Alcoholism, Nightclub

Geotags:

READING, STUART, US, BERLIN

Summary

Key Points:

With the arrival of high-speed home delivery companies, alcohol became more readily and rapidly available than ever before.
If you’ve been participating in Dry January, you may be feeling relieved, proud or anxious now that the month has come to an end.
Fiction offers precious – sobering – insights into the impact of alcohol in the lives of women and children.

How fiction can help

What exactly do these works of fiction offer that you might not find elsewhere?
Set against intimate domestic backdrops, they provide unflinching accounts of drinking as a woman and mother and where extreme addiction can take you.
One example comes from Lucia Berlin’s short story, Unmanageable, from the collection A Manual for Cleaning Women (2015).

An offer of hope

Stuart has acknowledged that aspects and characters in the book reflect his own childhood.
His ability to write Shuggie’s experiences at all – as well as his successful career working in fashion in the US – suggests there is a way through.
“All over the world mothers are having breakfast with their sons, seeing them off at the door,” she writes.
These aren’t works which point the finger, but which offer insights and understanding, tenderness and compassion.

No perfect fix

Shuggie’s attempts to entertain Agnes by reading to her from Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World don’t keep her sober.
But for the Lucia Berlin character in Unmanageable, literature literally saves her life:
“She was shaking too hard to stand.
Don’t think, God don’t think about the state you’re in or you will die, of shame, a stroke.
Don’t think, God don’t think about the state you’re in or you will die, of shame, a stroke.

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Kiera Vaclavik does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.