This was a 'half and half' book for me... I was as equally engrossed in the sordid and debauched descriptions as I was repelled by them. Much the same as some of the other very accurate reviews, there are not many people I could recommend this book to! If this isn't a genre you would normally choose to delve into, I would avoid at all costs! If you'd like to reminisce about those times you got so messed up you forgot your own name, go for it!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

“A wild, sleazy, drug-filled odyssey…”. Isn’t it about time we grew out of such solipsistic ramblings? Is taking vast quantities of dangerous drugs something to celebrate? Especially since listening to someone’s experiences on drugs is as tedious as listening to someone’s dreams. And just what is this book? A novel? Auto-fiction? A series of boring essays on boring subjects like…well, drugs? Does it matter? And more importantly, do I care? The answer to that at least is simple. No. I’m not interested in the narrator/author’s self-indulgent descriptions of his travels, his sexual fantasies, his masturbation. Especially when his sexual fantasies are distasteful to say the least, and usually misogynistic, often about young girls. And there are such banalities here, too, expressed as though they are the revelation of some insightful truths. “The Parisians were also, of course, exceptionally beautiful….Even the staff at the McDonald’s were stunning.” Really? There’s lazy writing as well. When he goes to see his friend Zoe’s play it is so predictably avant-garde and ridiculous. Inconsistencies – is it really that easy to send drugs through the mail? Bataille and Cioran obviously impress the author/narrator – but long disquisitions about them hardly add to the narrative drive. If this book is supposed to be some sort of quest narrative, a search for meaning, a search for transcendence, then in my view it fails as it is just so dull. Doyle admits that the book is 80% non-fiction, about his lived experience, so it was obviously important to him to write about it all, but that simply does not make for engaging reading. As he is now on the threshold of middle age, I suggest that he grow up and face the real world and leave his adolescent angst behind.

Rob Doyle has a brilliant mind, a great way with words and an unfiltered approach to writing about sex, drink, drugs and a lot of behaviour many people would consider risky or morally debatable. But that's what makes this book so compelling - I felt vicariously wasted, mostly entertained and laughed out loud probably more than was intended.

Full disclosure - i nearly packed this book in a few times before the halfway mark but persevered....  and eventually became utterly absorbed, crashing into the final third and ratting through. This novel / enhanced memoir / travelogue / art and literature critique / record of drug taking and (predominantly) miserable relationships / sex / masturbation is narrated by a frankly unlikeable narrator - who shares a name with the author - as he explores art, literature, sex, drugs and more drugs. If this doesn’t appeal, step away now... or allow yourself to get sucked into his life. I don’t often quote from books in a review but it helps set expectations in this case. “I imagined i was conducting important research at the limits of consciousness, but i see now i was just getting fucked up on a boat”. I laughed out loud reading this line...

There are few people i would personally recommend this too, but those select few i do point towards it will love it.

'Describing psychedelic experiences to those who have never had them is as futile as describing music to someone who was born deaf,'

That pretty much sums this up for me. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but this book just didn't interest me at all. Autofiction, autobiography, novel, journalism... Whatever you want to call it, the book declares itself as 'a long chunk of prose', so at least that's accurate. I'm not quite sure what book merits the rave reviews from John Boyne or Geoff Dyer, amongst others, so presumably I'm completely missing the trick here, but I found it self-indulgent navel-gazing, and a story of a man and a life that just didn't interest me. Like I say, not my kind of book, so I hope that it finds its market, and I wish the author well.

(Withh thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)