The continuation of O'Neill's autobiographical debut, Digging the
Vein (2006), even more caustic than its predecessor. After a quick
recount of his descent into a massive opium habit and marriage to
similarly fixed Susan, the unnamed narrator confesses the nature of
his troubles. "I needed to know that Death was here, in the room,
and that I was too fast, too young, and too smart for him." Fleeing
Los Angeles, the newlyweds return home to London only to enter the
institutional nightmare of the city's overflowing methadone
clinics, from which the whip-smart but self-destructive musician
reports with fascinating candor. He manipulates his physician while
simultaneously using 12-step meetings to find drug dealers to feed
his compulsions. Yet he still pretends to be part of society,
whether shoplifting from his record store job or practicing his
craft as a member of fly-by-night rock bands. While most of the
action focuses on the desperate mechanics of addiction, O'Neill
also paints London as a character and co-conspirator, illuminating
the filthy squalor of council slums and the florescent detritus of
a broken system. This is no redemption song. "The lie at the heart
of treatment centers, the recovery industry, and self help groups
is that that life off drugs is any better than life on them," the
narrator declares. "A preposterous idea. The two states coexist in
a parallel sense - to say that one is preferable to the other is to
miss the point entirely." He struggles to break the
kick-then-relapse cycle, but fails until he meets and falls in love
with punk-rock princess Vanessa from New York. Call it a junkie
fairy tale: Boy meets girl, gets clean and lives.The whole truth
with no reservations: not a pretty story, but a rare telling.
(Kirkus Reviews)
After exhausting their resources in the slums of Los Angeles, a
junkie and his wife settle in London's "murder mile," the city's
most violent and criminally corrupt section. Persevering past
failed treatments, persistent temptation, urban ennui, and his
wife's ruinous death wish, the nameless narrator fights to reclaim
his life.
In prose that could peel paint from a car, Tony O'Neill
re-creates the painfully comic, often tragic days of a recovering
heroin addict.
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