"This is why I drank, you know. Because I wanted every day to be like that. I wanted every day to feel like a movie montage, or at least to end in an epiphany, or at least to have a clear narrative arc, or at least to make some level of sense."

3.5 Stars

A memoir told in essay form, Nothing Good Can Come from This, is the non-chronological tale of Coulter’s life from alcoholic to sober woman. As with most books of essays some were stronger than others, but on a whole Coulter does a great job of making you feel her emotion and understand her journey. Feminism, love, politics, and culture all make an appearance and create for some hard-hitting, and sometimes humorous, stories and anecdotes.

"What's a girl to do when a bunch of dudes have just told her, in front of an audience, that she's wrong about what it's like to be herself?

I can see some people finding this a bit "woe is me" as she is an upper class white female with a good job, loving husband, and a childhood only partially marred by her parents. I, however, think it goes to show that alcoholism can consume anyone, not just those with downtrodden lives or no money in the bank.

"Take away my money or my extreme whiteness, and it might be clear that getting a lot of ethanol into my bloodstream as fast as possible is all I really care about."

I especially liked the author's approach to soberness. Why should others read this book? Because it's funny and raw at times, perfect for a lazy Sunday or for a chill day at the beach.

Kristi Coulter can take the most heart wrenching self doubt, the emotional writhing women tend to put themselves through on a fairly regular basis, and turn it around into a hoot. I haven't laughed so much in years. And she manages as well to point out many things women in general and southern women in particular never realize they have overcome. Not the least of which is tossing the crutch that replaced alcohol in our daily lives. Who stops to think how long it has been since you missed that first cleansing sip of a rye manhattan? Thank you, Ms. Coulter for your frank honesty. And for the laughs. May this be the start of a long, prolific writing career.

I received a free electronic copy of this collection of essays from Netgalley, Kristi Coulter, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, MCD x FSG Originals, Biographies & Memoirs in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me.

In Nothing Good Can Come From This, Kristi Coulter addresses a very first world (actual) problem: drinking in America. Specifically, she addresses the drinking culture of middle-class (upper, middle-class) women who drink to cope with stress and anxiety and the acceptance and even encouragement of the culture for an all day bottle of Rosé. Her essays lean heavily on her experiences in becoming sober, but it is her keen sense of observation, particularly after she is sober about the world around us that is eye-opening, In particular, I loved the essay "Enjoli", which went viral, discussing the pressure for women to "bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan" and be sexually attractive and available. Her humor hits a sweet-spot for me and I found her essays both entertaining and heartbreaking.

Kristi Coulter’s Nothing Good Can Come From This feels like when you hit your teeth on glass while drinking a pint of beer: sharp and sobering

Women have cornered the market on sober memoirs/addiction porn. Recent additions to the amazing Mary Karr and Caroline Knapp canon include the 500-plus-word Recovering: Intoxication and the Aftermath by Leslie Jamison, The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober by Catherine Gray, and Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget by Sarah Hepola. Amazon exec and Offdry.com-writer Kristi Coulter’s 2016 essay about women and drinking sought to explain why the modern woman drinks alcohol as a form of self-care: to escape our stress and anxiety and the fact that so much alcohol is marketed to us as exactly that just helps justify rosé all day.

In her book of essays, Nothing Good Can Come from This, Coulter discusses not just why women drink too much but when, where, and why she did. In the first essay, “debrief,” a question and answer session–which sounds a lot like therapy–uncovers a hole she tried to fill first with: “wine” and “Champagne. Cocktails. Scotch.” And then with: “Acupuncture, amino acids, applause, burning letters, cigarettes, cocks, cuffs, Ectasy, forgiveness, fury, glutamine, gospel choirs, gratitude, hypnosis, kava, kirtan, lipstick, lucid dreaming, Prada, psychics, punk rock, Reiki, smudging, straight As, sweat, tarot, tongues, vortexes, yoga, zazen.
But mostly wine.”

After muscling through sobriety (while difficult, her recovery doesn’t sound tragic, but she doesn’t go that deep into it), Coulter learns it’s the letting go, doing/trying to do less that helps, that truly matters: “You don’t have to read good books. You don’t have to improve your mind. You could read about Jennifer Aniston, who is either pregnant or not. Imagine being Jennifer Aniston, standing in line to buy an acai bowl and seeing a headline saying your pregnant but it still won’t be enough to win back Brad. Think of the dignity it takes to be Jennifer Aniston. No wonder she is so taut. She is holding in the fury of all womankind. You could think of this, but not for long, because you might find yourself forming an army to defend her. And you don’t have time for causes.
You do not have to join Jen’s army.”

Essays topics range from an otter kit that kept her sober that first night to running, traveling home from offsite work through Napa wine-tasting/buying and a bro-filled dive bar, her relationships, and a brave confession of stepping out on her marriage if only emotionally. Nothing is a smart, thought-provoking addition to a powerfully honest canon.

Wendy Ward
http://wendyrward.tumblr.com/

I have mixed feelings about this book. There were parts of it that were good, but other aspects that were not. The writing was disjointed, there simply was no flow. The author hops from one topic to the next. The entire book revolves around the author having found sobriety. She felt the need to discuss her sexual exploits and how she loves her husband but contemplated having affairs; how stressful her job is but how she splashes out with all the money she makes. I think the author wrote this book because she was bored.

I felt slightly guilty that I found Nothing Good Can Come From This such an entertaining read. That I did is testimony to Kristi Coulter's excellent prose. I could see why she had developed such a problem, and how she was able to maintain it for so long. Alcohol greases the wheels of so many social occasions and it completely socially acceptable. Being an oenophile, a gourmand or travelling for work gives you perfect cover for alcoholism. I really admire Krista for stopping drinking and being brave enough to write about it.

Coulter is a very conversational writer that enables "Nothing Good Can Come from This" to flow from the page directly to readers. It's a very honest book where Coulter examines her life choices and the results of her actions.

The book feels very contrived and cliched. There is no strong movement of voice or original thoughts. It did not hold my interest at all and I am a prolific reader who rarely abandons a book but I just couldn’t go through this one. Thank you #Netgalley for the copy though.

Nothing good can come from this Kristi Coulter
This is a fascinating and at the same time scary book. Kristi tells honestly and directly her difficult process to first recognise her alcohol dependency and then her difficult struggle to stay sober. She lets the reader get an honest look into her complex thoughts and sudden insights. It adds to the directness of her story that it’s does not follow her struggle chronologically. All her thoughts and observations weave together into a coherent story of why she started to drink and why she could fool herself so long about her ‘ small problem with alcohol’ . This book is a good read for everyone who wants to be more aware about our society and people who seem to function so well.

Booze is the oil in our motors, the thing that keeps us purring when we should be making other kinds of noise.

Kristi Coulter's essay "Enjoli", named after a perfume ad indicating women should be able to work and still keep it sexy for their men, got a lot of traction online and led to this essay collection, loosely centered around the theme of Coulter's decision to quit drinking. She writes from the perspective of the clarity that comes with not being under alcohol's influence, and that's undeniably a strong angle. She observes with fresh eyes what she'd been missing around her previously, including life's harsh realities that now have to be faced "without wine to erase each day".

Coulter's voice is direct, honest and even confessional, and starkly open about her flaws. It's not written in a way that begs attention or sympathy, and I liked that. She shows much of her own progression through recovery from alcohol addiction, dealing with career stress and sexism in a high-powered workplace, relationship and even marital difficulties.

I liked "Enjoli", but I think Coulter shows even better work throughout the collection than the essay that made her name. It did open my eyes to how absolutely saturated our culture can be with alcohol - and especially the way it's marketed to women, casually incorporated in so many parts of everyday life. When she comes up with so many examples, it just blows your mind. How difficult that must be, to navigate the world recovering from an addiction that's offered everywhere around you.

Sometimes I was a bit skeptical - at a work event, feeling awkward without a drink (understandable) she finds that the bartender can't even serve her water. A bar doesn't have soda water? Order an actual soda then. Maybe I was annoyed because I didn't drink for years, just because I didn't like it, and although people do treat you very oddly or suspiciously sometimes, it was never not an option to order a Diet Coke, even if only to have something in your hand at an awkward event. With so many powerful examples of alcohol's ubiquitousness, it felt odd to focus a scene on something like this.

So I wavered here and there, fairly standard for essay collections, but ultimately Coulter's writing and quick sense of humor won me over. Her humor is an excellent plus throughout, often acerbic but always on point, whether describing her soused days or the surprises of everyday life that accompany sobriety.

It has some drawbacks - she mentions frequently that she makes a lot of money working for a big company (quick Googling: it's Amazon, but she never mentions the company by name, despite descriptions of and powerful scenes from the corporate culture.) But it just feels uncomfortable to read multiple mentions of being a high earner, even if it's not done in any spiteful or bragging way. 

A huge plus is that she has an MFA in writing, so unlike many memoirs coming from people in unrelated careers (although she was a writer for Amazon, but writing for a corporation is obviously different than this kind of creative) this one is excellently written - never dull, and always able to hold your interest even on topics I couldn't care less about, like how she threw herself into running after quitting drinking. Her observations make it all worthwhile.

From "Enjoli", the essay that apparently went viral (I'd never heard of it, not that I'm the barometer for these things) she describes being at a pool at the same time as a wasted bachelorette party:

It is so nice on this side of the pool, where the book I'm reading is a letdown and my legs look too white and the ice has long since melted in my glass and work is hard and there's still no good way to be a girl and I don't know what to do with my life and I have to actually deal with all of that. Sober. I never expected to make it to this side of the pool. I never thought I'd get to be here.

In "Through the Desert, Repenting" she writes a list of all the things you don't have to do if you don't want to while recovering, including

You do not have to answer the phone or respond to email. If you do, you do not have to tell the truth to anyone who asks how you are.

From "Do You Have a Drinking Problem?", a tongue-in-cheek piece styled as a quiz with questions like:

When other people leave wine in their glasses, you
- Finish it when they're not looking.
- Get annoyed because you can't refill yours until they finish theirs and you really need to refill yours.
- Want to cry because some people are obsessed with astronomy or civil rights or God, and you're obsessed with this.

I don't know why but I read over that last one so many times, it just spoke to me. Much of what Coulter writes is nowhere near exclusive to alcoholism, but rather would speak to anyone who's struggled with addiction or fixation of any kind. There's a point where you just despair wondering why the hell this is what it is for you. I was just so struck by that. I think there's a lot of writing here that will speak to you and similarly strike people who have struggled with addiction, compulsion, eating disorders, etc. Coulter has done really excellent work in pulling back the curtain on her own struggle, and holding up a mirror to her life pre- and post-drinking that I think many others will be able to see themselves in. 

There are no amber waves of grain in my life, and I don't think much about whether I belong on this landmass; I just want to belong to the day as it forms around me. Or when I'm feeling ambitious, to the city.

Eye-opening experiences of sobriety and the rough road it took to get there, from a witty, smart, and empathic voice, sure to speak to many others within the same realm of experience.

Note: I received this book from the author/publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'm a big fan of memoir/essays told with dry wit. Like enough to say it's probably one of my favorite genres. So maybe I'm biased, maybe I'm burnt out of realistic humor writing, maybe I'm in a weird place but this just didn't do it for me. Kristi Coulter writes about her decision to quit drinking and how life is both easier and harder without a drink. Some of the stories are funny, some of them more of a hit to the gut. Overall, her ability to articulate the struggles and then share them is well done and important.

However, I found the writing to be a bit on the rambling side of things, which I'm not always a fan of. There were some essays that would start in one place, somehow be in a completely different topic and then somehow come back to the beginning. It would just feel random or like she wanted to make a stretch to connect two different life moments. I felt like some of the essays also would have been more powerful or intriguing if there had been more digging into the emotional side of things. For example, her parents come up several times but she never really digs into the relationship with them or examines it further, which I think was a missed opportunity. But, who knows, maybe I've been swayed by too much therapy and I always see the parents as the place things go wrong.

Overall, this is an interesting set of essays that will definitely strike a chord with people familiar with alcoholism or addictions in general. I didn't personally love this but that doesn't mean it won't be a lifeline for some other reader.

Thank you to Net Galley for the Advanced Reader Copy of this book in exchange for my unbiased review.

I have mixed feelings on this book. As another reviewer put it, some essay's were a 2 and some a 5. I found the book very real and relatable. She has a very dry sense of humor, which I appreciate, and her interactions with alcohol ring very true. However, while I do believe she's a true alcoholic, I didn't find her highs and lows to be interesting enough for an entire book. She did some dumb and self sabotaging things, but nothing extreme or unique enough to keep me that interested for an entire book. One or two essays, entertaining, and entire book of them seemed redundant. I believe her relationship with alcohol proved tragic for her, but as a reader, it just wasn't super interesting after awhile.

3.5, rounded up. It took me much longer than usual to get through this book, as it's not an 'easy read' in the same way that Augusten Burroughs's memoirs or Cat Marnell's How to Murder Your Life are.

While her experiences may not exactly be unique or groundbreaking, Kristi Coulter is a very good writer. I loved her strong points of view, even when I found myself disagreeing, and found her to be funny, without being at all 'woe is me'-- she takes personal responsibility for her mistakes, and I respect that.

A good book like this is on the level of a great conversation - and that's the true accomplishment here from Coulter. This book is like having a brutally honest, funny, sometimes sad, always interesting, opinionated friend right there beside you.

I've read a bunch of memoirs over the years and tend to like this approach better - breaking your life up into essays that take a slice of experience and dive in deep to take a look. "Enjoli" will be a revelation for those who haven't read it online yet but the shorter, sarcastic pieces on how to quit drinking are a treasure, too. But I've basically highlighted the full essays "Girl Skulks into a Room," "Fascination" and "Pussy Triptych" because of all the great sentences that made me stop, only to pick up reading again and run into another great sentence.

A truly memorable debut and a must-read for any woman.

The opening essay, Enjoli, is alludes to how maybe excessive drinking is a by-product of being a “24 hour woman,” which is an analogy for the sociological concept of “the second shift.” I thought it was interesting. For my own reasons, I do not drink alcohol and found many of the author’s observations rang true for my own personal experiences being sober in a society that encourages drinking.

Desire Lines, an essay that seemingly both shunned and celebrated bourgeois values, seemed out of place among the rest of the essays.

The essay about how and why they moved out of Michigan made me sad, as I was growing up in Michigan during the late 90’s and early aughts. I witnessed firsthand the flight of Gen X voters that caused the state to go blue during that time. Her ignorance of the area, its people, and adding to the very problem by leaving with the exodus of that demographic of workers brought up a lot of negative feeling for me.

The other essays were about the author’s relationships with her parents, alcohol, struggles with anxiety, and her life. Overall, I thought the first essay was by far the best, and worth picking up the book to read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free copy of this ebook in exchange for an unbiased review.

I selected this book because I quit drinking 13 years ago for various reasons. I thought this was going to be more of a memoir style, but it was a collection of essays that weren't in any type of linear fashion. I found the book a bit too vile and "smash the patriarchy" for me, but others may enjoy it.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a copy of this book for review.