Dry

Augusten Burroughs 2003

Devastation Rating

Emotionally Ruined
addiction grief loss mental health

Our Take

Burroughs writes advertising copy by day and drinks himself to obliteration by night, and his prose style — sharp, funny, self-lacerating — perfectly mirrors the addict's talent for performing competence while everything collapses. The friend he loses to AIDS makes this something more than a recovery memoir. It becomes a book about all the ways we lose people.

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