Nice Recovery

[non-fiction]

In this memoir (which she privately refers to as “Drinky Pants: A Quitter’s Story”), Susan Juby writes about the problems she had with alcohol when she was a teenager and about the painful and sometimes funny experiences of trying to be clean and sober at the time when most young adults are just starting to drink. Through a series of interviews she also looks into what recovery is like for adolescents and twenty-somethings washing up on the shores of addiction today.

Praise for Nice Recovery

Chris Crutcher, author of Deadline, Whale Talk and Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes
“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 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.”

M.A.C. Farrant, The Globe and Mail
“Juby tells her story with such warmth and honesty 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 story is, quite simply, an inspiration.”

Deirdre Baker, Toronto Star
“Apologies and amends have an important role in Vancouver Islander Susan Juby’s hilarious, moving memoir Nice Recovery. Most readers know Juby as the author of the Alice books and other off-beat young adult novels. Here 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.”

Steven Schelling, Westender
“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.”

Bill Robertson, Star-Phoenix
“[An] alarming, blunt, and delightfully written memoir… This is a brave and helpful book. It’s actually entertaining while it’s being ghastly.”

Alexis Keinlin, Grande Prairie Daily Herald-Tribune
“Anyone who reads this book will learn something, whether it be about why some people are more prone to addiction or about the recovery process. This is a very important book, and one that should help parents, educators and teens.”

Zoe Whittall, Quill & Quire
“Unlike many addiction memoirs, Nice Recovery isn’t a hot mess tell-all. Like Juby herself, it’s honest and funny but avoids oversharing.”