Note Found in a Bottle

Rating:
Summary: I Was A Preppie Drunk
Review: A real disappointment, especially considering the many glowing advance reviews. Mind-numbingly self-absorbed in the beginning, and smug at the end. What's even more laughable is that after detailed chronicling of her sex life, her recovery boils down to "I found God and stopped drinking, and how DARE you want to know the details of something so personal, you insensitive trolls!" Read Caroline Knapp's "Drinking: A Love Story" for an honest and heart-felt exploration of this topic. Cheever's "Bottle" should be tossed overboard.

Rating:
Summary: Just plain bad
Review: At one point in her recent memoir 'Note Found In A Bottle', Susan Cheever tells us that looking back on her life she almost feels as though it had happened to someone else. I find that very easy to believe, because this comes off as an amatuerish biography by a not-so-close aquaintance. Reading this book, I felt as though Cheever were fast-forwarding through a poorly made movie of her life. She has clearly been through a lot and has experienced enough to write something formidable, but instead she rushes through her life stopping only to drop the occasional name. What is truly amazing to me is the lack of introspection on Cheever's part. Once in a while she attempts to analyze her past, but the attempts are shallow. Simply put, she was unable to get close enough to her own life to allow me to empathize.

It is very difficult to review a memoir, because in the end you are not only reviewing an individual's work, you are reviewing the individual. That being said, I don't think I would have enjoyed having Susan Cheever as a friend. While she seems to have made some vague connection between her past problems and her drinking, she often writes as though she were patting herself on the back for her cool friends and hip lifestyle. Now she pats herself on the back for outgrowing her desire for a drink. If only she had spent more time thinking and less time revelling in the hype she has created for herself, this could have been a book worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: So Light That It Floats Away
Review: At one point in her recent memoir 'Note Found In A Bottle', Susan Cheever tells us that looking back on her life she almost feels as though it had happened to someone else. I find that very easy to believe, because this comes off as an amatuerish biography by a not-so-close aquaintance. Reading this book, I felt as though Cheever were fast-forwarding through a poorly made movie of her life. She has clearly been through a lot and has experienced enough to write something formidable, but instead she rushes through her life stopping only to drop the occasional name. What is truly amazing to me is the lack of introspection on Cheever's part. Once in a while she attempts to analyze her past, but the attempts are shallow. Simply put, she was unable to get close enough to her own life to allow me to empathize.

It is very difficult to review a memoir, because in the end you are not only reviewing an individual's work, you are reviewing the individual. That being said, I don't think I would have enjoyed having Susan Cheever as a friend. While she seems to have made some vague connection between her past problems and her drinking, she often writes as though she were patting herself on the back for her cool friends and hip lifestyle. Now she pats herself on the back for outgrowing her desire for a drink. If only she had spent more time thinking and less time revelling in the hype she has created for herself, this could have been a book worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Six Decades of Top Shelf Liquor. A Sot's Memoir
Review: By her own account, Susan Cheever has had quite a romp. For nearly six heady decades she's had her fill of dry Martinis, fine wines, champagne, Famous Grouse scotch, and up to three famous lovers in a single day. Publishing doors have swung open to her as the daughter of a revered writer and the wife of three other writers. (The most poignant parts of this book heavily owe their style to her father. Who but John Cheever, in the 1978 Preface to his "Stories," characterized the post-war years in NYC as a time when "almost everybody wore a hat"? Susan writes: "the men all wore brimmed felt hats trimmed with grosgrain ribbon.") Now, in her ninth book, a memoir, she assures us she has turned her back on her drunken, sluttish ways. She promises to tell all, while omitting almost everything, including the surname of her first husband. (Cowley-- it's in the biography of John Cheever.) She says she has found God and given up alcohol for hard candy. She says she is now lying sober in the arms of her current lover, having cleared away her drunken husbands along with the bottles on the sideboard. But is she truly reformed? Why is this book about drinking strangely free of morning-after headaches? Why aren't there scenes of Susan desperately guzzling rubbing alcohol? (Even Kitty Dukakis drank some strange brews.) Herein lies the problem with "Note." While Susan may now be sober, she's still narcissistic, and she's not sorry. And why should she be, exactly? She has had a fun life. She can't quite resist the temptation of dropping all those famous names (and many, many more in the pages of thanks following the text). Yet we never get to know the "real Susan." "Note" irritates, packaged as it is as a trendy confession of a sot who has seen the light. Why not just level with us, Susan: Your life has been a lucky one, full of marvelous things that were given to you. Why turn it into this silly, silly drunkalog?

Rating:
Summary: Comment on Note in a Bottle
Review: Cheever's book is one more in a list of banal works she has produced. When will she stop?

Rating:
Summary: a wonderful memoir
Review: Don't be touted off this book by thinking, great, just what the world needs, another tell-all by a reformed drunk. There is so much here. Any book by one of the Cheevers merits a look and this is one I have waited for for a long time. It could have been much longer but Susan Cheever cuts out all the extraneous matter and gets to the core of her struggle with alcohol. We all struggle with something and reading such an honest account not only entertains and informs, it helps to lighten our own load and put it in some clearer perspective. If I had any complaints about the book, she drops a few too many names for my taste. We know the author knows and is friends with a lot of famous people. To be reminded as often as we are slows us down and is a tad annoying. But just when you think there is no way to turn an old subject into something fresh and alive, pick up this book and be surprised.

Rating:
Summary: Zero Stars
Review: Give her a mirror. Some really excellent lip-liner. And don't ask any personal questions. Because in this book, Note Found in a Bottle : My Life As a Drinker, by Susan Cheever, you won't find any answers. It seems this author has gone from the depths of alcoholism to the shallowness of a kiddie-pool. One can imagine her reading all the single-star reviews and then wandering around in her English-inspired garden past midnight and muttering out loud, 'What did I do wrong? Should I have chosen a different photographer for the jacket photograph? Should my last name have been larger on the cover? Should I have worn Prada?'

Such is the angst of this novel. The ultimate "Poor Me" novel that offers little more than name dropping, and bald reportage. And not even very interesting name dropping, I might add. Flat is the key word for this novel.

Of course, we wouldn't hate her just for being the daughter of a beloved writer. In fact, we would expect some of that gift to be passed along to her. We would look forward to it. And I don't think we'd expect too much, as readers. We'd be fair.

But this?

Dear God, let the geneticists figure out what went wrong.

Rating:
Summary: No Easy Answers, But That's Alcoholism
Review: I am a bit shocked by the reviews in this section. Yes, Susan Cheever name drops. Yes, she is self-absorbed. And yes, there are no down and dirty stories of the morning after. But I found this a highly engrossing personal memoir of a lost soul. The first-person writing style is excellent. You fly through this book which is just as much about what she does not say as what she does say. I found her story touching and moving. As a person trying to overcome a drinking problem, there were passages I underlined as if to say she was talking about me.

After reading this book I feel I know Susan Cheever and like Susan Cheever. If you can get over class anxiety, I think you will too.

Rating:
Summary: Who is Susan Cheever?
Review: I couldn't answer this question any better after having read the book than I could have before, when I had never heard of her.

There is absolutely no character development in this book; I could never remember which husband was which. No emotions were described in such a way that the reader could feel them. I can't believe Miss Cheever is considered a writer.

Additionally, there seems no attempt that I discern to understand what drove her to drink (other than habit and tradition) or what enabled her to stop.

This book will most definitely not help anyone who is struggling with a drinking problem. I don't think it would even be enlightening to someone who had just met Susan Cheevers and wanted to know her history. Just being told that her life had been one of promiscuous sex and heavy drinking until she had children, who were her salvation, would pretty much sum up what the book reveals.

Rating:
Summary: honest and finely crafted
Review: I honor Ms. Cheever for exposing her life in such a way that illuminates the denial and distortion that accompanies this disease. I thought it was extremely well written and unsparing prose. I recommend this book to anyone with a soul which has been cracked and mended. She has real talent; I hope she remembers that when she reads some of the detritus herein.