Review by Booklist Review
Forced to spend time alone with herself during the COVID-19 lockdown, Smith was less than pleased with the state of her physical and mental health. Resolutely deciding to embark on a determined plan of improvement, she documents all her ups, downs, and sugar withdrawal symptoms in this wry and bracingly intelligent memoir. Over five successive months, the author quit alcohol, sugar, cannabis, caffeine, and social media and then spent the summer off of it all to "see what it felt like to be free." In what could have simply been a funny recollection of personal challenges (cannabis was disturbingly difficult to shake), Smith considers philosophy, health, and professional success as she realizes, with no small amount of shock, that her addictions are far stronger and more destructive than she realized. Her self-reflection occasionally takes her into the past, but most of these lively chapters dwell on revelations from her increasingly surprising present. More thoughtful than one expects from a literary chronicle of a midlife crisis, this personal reckoning makes for compulsive reading, providing much food for thought and spurring considerable discussion. Book groups will revel in Smith's wit while giving deep thought to her many hard-won discoveries.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this fun yet flimsy memoir, former Blake Babies drummer Smith (Red Velvet Underground) describes how, in the face of several long-simmering addictions, she took control of her life during a six-month experiment with abstinence. During the pandemic, when Smith's addictive behavior reached its peak, she withdrew from her five deadly sins--alcohol, sugar, cannabis, caffeine, and social media--one by one. Drawing on sources as diverse as anthropologist Gregory Bateson, macrobiotic guru Michio Kushi, and writers Charles Bukowski and Michael Pollan, Smith investigates the cultural influences of addiction, weaving in her own history with quitting and poking fun at her "self-righteous and preachy" attitude: "There's something powerful, dignified, and pure about the austerity of a bowl of well-cooked brown rice next to a glowing orange bowl of Kraft macaroni and cheese," she quips. After months of self-denial, Smith went back to indulging in her verboten substances, albeit in smaller quantities. Regrettably, her critique of her own drumming--"I blow endings all the time"--also applies to this memoir, which starts strong but loses rhythm and purpose as it progresses. Even at a brief 200 pages, the chapters begin to feel thin and repetitive, and the concluding section about Smith's music career fails to satisfyingly wrap things up. This comes up short. Agent: Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Union Literary. (Sept.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A retired rock drummer and nonfiction writer explores how a personal challenge to quit bad habits led to an unexpected life reset. During the pandemic, Smith, a lecturer in communications at Northwestern and author of Red Velvet Underground, decided to rid herself of habits that helped her cope with enforced isolation as well as other elements of her life. The author first did away with the drinking that had earned her the nickname Freda Lush and led to a stint with AA. She recalls how the media--and especially films like Arthur and Barfly--had influenced her thinking about the "magic" of alcohol. Smith then dispensed with sugar, which she associated with the oversweetened cereals consumed in secret throughout a Gen X childhood deprived of access to "artificially flavored, preservative-laden snacks like Twinkies." After that, the author "lived five straight months completely THC-free." Introduced to marijuana in her late 40s, it quickly became Smith's "antidote to my relentless overworked life in academia." Once she stopped using marijuana, however, she wondered if "maybe we all need drugs to survive in this world." She eliminated caffeine next and realized not only how addicted she had become, but also how it had become the necessary fuel for the workaholism characteristic of late-state capitalism. Social media was Smith's last habit to die. In rediscovering "my attention span" and "ability to focus," the author began to muse on the unsettling question that absence posed: If she did not post, did she even exist? The unintended effect of her experiment was a "declaration of limitations," which led her to quit a prestigious university job for a life more consistent with her boundaries and desires. As Smith analyzes our hyperconnected culture that leads to bad habits, she offers wry wisdom that is both provocative and timely. A humorous, insightful memoir of self-improvement. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
