Susan Cheever Livres

The late writer's eldest child draws on her father's journals and letters and on her own memories to construct a sympathetic, insightful account of Cheever's life, career, literary relationships, problems, and family life.

A portrait of five Concord, Massachusetts, writers whose works were at the center of mid-nineteenth-century American thought and literature evaluates their interconnected relationships, influence on each other's works, and complex beliefs.

Born into a world ruled by the cocktail hour, in which the solution to any problem could be found in a dry martini, Susan Cheever's existence was both charmed and damned. She and her father, the celebrated novelist and short-story writer John Cheever, were both deeply touched and troubled by alcohol.For the first time addressing the profound effects that alcohol had on her life, in shaping her relationships with men, and in influencing her efforts as a writer, Susan Cheever has written a memoir that is shockingly revealing. She tells of her childhood obsession with the niceties of cocktails and all that they implied -- sociability, sophistication, status; her college days spent drinking beer and cheap wine; and her three failed marriages. It is a compelling story that brings her perilously close to the edge of oblivion. Sober now for several years, Susan looks back on her life with clear-eyed candor in a book about recovery that is wrenching and ultimately inspiring.