From the author of Alice, I Think comes a riveting memoir of addiction and recovery. Susan Juby started out as a bright and creative student with an innate ability to write incredible stories. At the age of thirteen her life began to unravel, and like many teens, she turned to alcohol to get her through the awkward stages of trying to find her own unique identity and fit in with her peers at school. In this revealing memoir, she details the painful and sometimes funny experiences of trying to be clean and sober at a time when most young adults are just starting their drinking careers. Juby also looks into how the situation has changed for young people washing up on the shores of addiction today through a series of interviews with recovering addicts and alcoholics. Told with honesty and Juby’s wry wit, Nice Recovery is a candid memoir from one of Canada’s most beloved writers.
Nice Recovery
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“I’m embarrassed that I lack words to describe the raw elegance of Susan Juby’s Nice Recovery. It is smart, funny, lyrical, desperately candid and astonishingly generous; and it is fucking courageous. It speaks to the very heart of the loneliness and despair that leads to the destruction of so many kids’ dreams. And then it gives us hope. This is not a young adult book; it is not an adult book. It is a human book with the power to literally save lives. I am honoured to blurb it.” - Chris Crutcher
“Juby tells her story with such honesty and warmth that it’s easy to empathize with both her ascent into alcoholism, for that’s what it was for her, and then her spiralling downfall. Her story is also interspersed with the same wonderfully incisive humour that distinguishes her novels, though she is careful to avoid flippancy; her book, after all, was not written for laughs… It is Juby’s acceptance and forgiveness of herself that is on display here; her story is, quite simply, an inspiration.” - The Globe and Mail
“The best comic writers always have a dark side. Susan Juby tells the tale of her days as a wild young ‘drinky pants’ with ‘a minor drug addiction on the side’ with great spirit and honesty. You’ll laugh, you’ll cringe, you may even shed a tear, and you’ll definitely cheer her on her way to recovery. A great read.” - O.R. Melling
“[In] Susan Juby’s hilarious, moving memoir Nice Recovery …. she is autobiographer, confessing her teenage alcoholism and drug habit. She does this with compulsively readable, self-deprecating wit, a candid voice and an entertainer’s penchant for the lively turn of phrase…. A cautionary tale, yes, but with energy derived from a spirit of compassion and sympathy. It’s as wise, witty and engrossing as any young adult novel I’ve read recently.” - Toronto Star
“Unlike many addiction memoirs, Nice Recovery isn’t a hot mess tell-all. Like Juby herself, it’s honest and funny, but avoids over-sharing…. If you’re drawn to Juby’s work because she’s more Liz Lemon than Elizabeth Wurtzel, however, rest assured she hasn’t abandoned her sense of humour. As she sees it, Nice Recovery is ultimately just like all of her other books, an uneasy mixture of “the dark and the light.”” - Quill & Quire
“[A] good read for anyone.” - Winnipeg Free Press
“Juby’s narrative is captivating as she describes her life as a party girl and her precipitous descent into addiction. […] The sometimes brutal honesty of Juby’s story is lighted by flashes of her familiar wry sense of humour and readers will enjoy some genuine laugh-out-loud moments. […] Addiction is an unfortunately common experience and this book will have an almost universal appeal for both teens and adults.” - Canadian Children’s Book News
“Alarming, blunt, and delightfully written … This is a brave and helpful book.” - The StarPhoenix
“Juby’s journey through addiction and out the other side is thoroughly entertaining, for both adults and older teens… with its honest, forthright presentation of fact, Nice Recovery goes a long way towards reviving a reviled and often (rightly) suspect form of expression.” - Westender
“Juby’s sheer honesty and straightforward language is engaging.… By recounting her story, Juby shows how teens can get into substance abuse, and details the hard process of recovering and enjoying life without chemical stimulants … Anyone who reads this book will learn something… By bravely sharing her own story, Juby has undoubtedly helped adults and teens talk about or deal with their own substance issues.” - Grande Prairie Daily Herald-Tribune
“Juby tells her story with such honesty and warmth that it’s easy to empathize with both her ascent into alcoholism, for that’s what it was for her, and then her spiralling downfall. Her story is also interspersed with the same wonderfully incisive humour that distinguishes her novels, though she is careful to avoid flippancy; her book, after all, was not written for laughs… It is Juby’s acceptance and forgiveness of herself that is on display here; her story is, quite simply, an inspiration.” - The Globe and Mail
“The best comic writers always have a dark side. Susan Juby tells the tale of her days as a wild young ‘drinky pants’ with ‘a minor drug addiction on the side’ with great spirit and honesty. You’ll laugh, you’ll cringe, you may even shed a tear, and you’ll definitely cheer her on her way to recovery. A great read.” - O.R. Melling
“[In] Susan Juby’s hilarious, moving memoir Nice Recovery …. she is autobiographer, confessing her teenage alcoholism and drug habit. She does this with compulsively readable, self-deprecating wit, a candid voice and an entertainer’s penchant for the lively turn of phrase…. A cautionary tale, yes, but with energy derived from a spirit of compassion and sympathy. It’s as wise, witty and engrossing as any young adult novel I’ve read recently.” - Toronto Star
“Unlike many addiction memoirs, Nice Recovery isn’t a hot mess tell-all. Like Juby herself, it’s honest and funny, but avoids over-sharing…. If you’re drawn to Juby’s work because she’s more Liz Lemon than Elizabeth Wurtzel, however, rest assured she hasn’t abandoned her sense of humour. As she sees it, Nice Recovery is ultimately just like all of her other books, an uneasy mixture of “the dark and the light.”” - Quill & Quire
“[A] good read for anyone.” - Winnipeg Free Press
“Juby’s narrative is captivating as she describes her life as a party girl and her precipitous descent into addiction. […] The sometimes brutal honesty of Juby’s story is lighted by flashes of her familiar wry sense of humour and readers will enjoy some genuine laugh-out-loud moments. […] Addiction is an unfortunately common experience and this book will have an almost universal appeal for both teens and adults.” - Canadian Children’s Book News
“Alarming, blunt, and delightfully written … This is a brave and helpful book.” - The StarPhoenix
“Juby’s journey through addiction and out the other side is thoroughly entertaining, for both adults and older teens… with its honest, forthright presentation of fact, Nice Recovery goes a long way towards reviving a reviled and often (rightly) suspect form of expression.” - Westender
“Juby’s sheer honesty and straightforward language is engaging.… By recounting her story, Juby shows how teens can get into substance abuse, and details the hard process of recovering and enjoying life without chemical stimulants … Anyone who reads this book will learn something… By bravely sharing her own story, Juby has undoubtedly helped adults and teens talk about or deal with their own substance issues.” - Grande Prairie Daily Herald-Tribune
About the Author
SUSAN JUBY is the bestselling author of the internationally popular Alice MacLeod books—recently made into a television series—and the critically acclaimed novels Getting the Girl and Another Kind of Cowboy. Her work has won the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize, been selected as a Children’s Book Sense 76 Pick, a Kirkus Editors’ Choice, and an ALA Best Book, and has been shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, an Edgar Award, an Arthur Ellis Award, and the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Please visit her website at www.susanjuby.com.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By P. Coccia
Format:Hardcover
Susan Juby's new book is definitely about addiction but not only a book for addicts. Most people's have been touched by someone who is or was substance dependent or abusive. For the minority who have not, the book is completely accessible and explores and explains not only alcoholism and addiction, but is easy to relate to the feelings of isolation, low self-esteem, fear of judgment and awkwardness in social situations that are part of the memoir.
Susan is brave, but for those who know her style, laugh-out-loud funny and I don't normally laugh out loud, honest, and gives a serious consideration of addiction from all different angles (medical, scientific, sociological, etc.) that is easy to understand without being patronizing.
The novel follows Susan Juby's personal experiences in becoming a teen alcoholic and her choice to enter into a treatment for her addiction at the age when all her peers would be exploring alcohol legally for the first time. She doesn't hold back and searches for answers about why alcohol was effective and how it became a problem not just for her but for others. The book is enlightening on what it feels like and why, showing the cycles which keep people addicted and giving hope that it can be overcome.
The book is a steal at this price. I have read it once and intend to reread, have recommended it to friends and family and gifted it.
Susan is brave, but for those who know her style, laugh-out-loud funny and I don't normally laugh out loud, honest, and gives a serious consideration of addiction from all different angles (medical, scientific, sociological, etc.) that is easy to understand without being patronizing.
The novel follows Susan Juby's personal experiences in becoming a teen alcoholic and her choice to enter into a treatment for her addiction at the age when all her peers would be exploring alcohol legally for the first time. She doesn't hold back and searches for answers about why alcohol was effective and how it became a problem not just for her but for others. The book is enlightening on what it feels like and why, showing the cycles which keep people addicted and giving hope that it can be overcome.
The book is a steal at this price. I have read it once and intend to reread, have recommended it to friends and family and gifted it.
Format:Hardcover
There are a number of aspects of Susan's story that make it worth reading. One, her account of life growing up in small-town Canada and looking to be accepted is an authentic one. Her description of personal adolescent trials and tribulations in a middle school, later to become a high school environment is authentic. I was there as a teacher and saw numerous bright students like Susan indulge in alcohol and drugs because they couldn't handle the pressures of growing up. While she might appear, at times, to be revelling in the dissolute life of teenage addiction, nothing could be further from the truth. The author wants us to know that there are many factors contributing to her addiction that play out over time and space. In this first phase of Juby's life, we get to see how friends, teachers, and parents interacted with her during some very troubling moments. Teenage rebellion and peer pressure were social forces at work in her life, and alcohol became the means by which to dull the fear of being left out. Here was a young girl, who had a special talent to succeed in school, wasting her life in self-destructive behaviour. Two, as the story progress, the reader gets the unmistakable sense that Juby was crying out for help, and nobody seemed to be prepared to help her. As she moved on to big-city Toronto in search of restarting her life and kicking the booze, there are more retreats than advances: some humorous, others depressing. Three, Juby finally gets on the right track, after so many false starts. While in Toronto, she finally determines to establish a safe and secure lifestyle that would prevent her from being vulnerable to alcohol. Built into her plan was the need to find a mentor and support group that accompany her on her courageous journey to recovery. The latter part of the book deals with various therapy options available to an addict wanting to get sober. This autobiography was especially meaningful because it took me back thirty years in my teaching career to a wacky time when students held wild parties in places like the local gravel pit months in advance of graduation, and at least one student was killed annually in a fatal car accident caused by drunk driving. Thank you, Susan, for making the supreme effort to overcome this small-town mindset.
1 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
IT IS SHOCKING TO READ A BOOK IN WHICH A MERE CHILD BECOMES TOTALLY ADDICTED TO A SUBSTANCE WHEN SHE IS FROM A GOOD, MIDDLECLASS HOME IN AMERICA.....SHOCKING AND SAD. ONE WONDERS HOW TYPICAL SUCH A STORY ACTUALLY IS. WHERE ARE HER PARENTS, HER TEACHERS, HER MENTORS? IS THIS WHAT WE CONDONE BY OUR ABSENCE? IT IS SO UNFAIR FOR A CHILD TO HAVE TO ENDURE WHAT THE MAIN CHARACTER IN THIS BOOK MUST. I COMMEND SUSAN JUBY ON ENLIGHTENING US(THE REST OF THE POPULATION) WITH HER TACIT WARNING THAT THIS COULD BE YOUR OWN DAUGHTER, NIECE OR GIRLFRIEND. ALTHOUGH AT TIMES THE DESCRIPTIONS AND THOUGHTS BECOME BORING, I GUESS THIS IS A TRUE REFLECTION OF THE MAIN CHARACTER'S STATE OF BEING AT THE TIME. IN OTHER WORDS, JUBY HAS SUCCESSFULLY CAPTURED THE HIGHS,THE LOWS,THE FEARS AND THE "GOOD TIMES" OF THE ADDICT. THIS BOOK IS ONE OF SEVERAL EXCELLENT BIOGRAPHIES DEALING WITH ADDICTION AND ITS RESULTS ON THE VERY YOUNG
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