How to Murder Your Life: A Memoir by Cat Marnell (Epub)

Description

From Cat Marnell, “New York’s enfant terrible” (The Telegraph), a candid and darkly humorous memoir of prescription drug addiction and self-sabotage, set in the glamorous world of fashion magazines and downtown nightclubs.

At twenty-six, Cat Marnell was an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America—and that’s all most people knew about her. But she hid a secret life. She was a prescription drug addict. She was also a “doctor shopper” who manipulated Upper East Side psychiatrists for pills, pills, and more pills; a lonely bulimic who spent hundreds of dollars a week on binge foods; a promiscuous party girl who danced barefoot on banquets; a weepy and hallucination-prone insomniac who would take anything—anything—to sleep.

This is a tale of self-loathing, self-sabotage, and yes, self-tanner. It begins at a posh New England prep school—and with a prescription for Attention Deficit Disorder medication Ritalin. It continues to New York, where we follow Marnell’s amphetamine-fueled rise from intern to editor through the beauty departments of NYLON, Teen Vogue, Glamour, and Lucky. We see her fight between ambition and addiction and how, inevitably, her disease threatens everything she worked so hard to achieve.

From the Condé Nast building (where she rides the elevator alongside Anna Wintour) to seedy nightclubs, from doctors’ offices and mental hospitals, Marnell shows—like no one else can—what it is like to live in the wild, chaotic, often sinister world of a young female addict who can’t say no.

Combining lightning-rod subject matter and bold literary aspirations, How to Murder Your Life is mesmerizing, revelatory, and necessary.

User’s Reviews

“Sensational…Marnell treads a knife edge between glamorizing her own despair and rendering it with savage honesty. Several sections read like the drug-fueled interludes of The Goldfinch…She propels the reader through what could seem like repetitiveness (drugs, binges, bad mistakes, sprawling parties) with the skill of a pulp novelist.” ― New York Times Book

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ If you like memoirs by authors who are entirely lacking in self-awareness, who don’t show any interest in trying to understand or comprehend the reasons driving their self-destructive behavior and who never quite clean-up their act then this is the book for you. Ms Marnell lacks insight into herself and her actions as well as any interest in digging below her superficial surface. She admits that she’s not entirely certain that all of her memories are real or that they actually occurred yet she can recount every designer label of anything she’s ever worn. She recites events but not from the perspective of looking back at lessons learned but rather as if she’s wistfully recounting fond memories of her youth.Other people appear only tangentially in the storyline and only as they are reacting to yet-another outrageous thing that Ms Marnell has said or done. A broader perspective is desperately missing here. It would’ve been interesting if her family members had been given the opportunity to add their own thoughts and insights.As others have already noted the book ends rather abruptly and without any insight or or life lessons learned. As a result I closed the book thinking…..’So what?’. Nothing truly awful or life-changing ever happens to Ms Marnell. Her family enables, funds and rescues her over and over and over. She wasn’t fired from any jobs. She was never down nor out. She always had drug connections, a roof over her head, money to travel, cell phones (and their bills paid), etc. The only personal regrets shared were her lack of real friends and a boyfriend. But again this is typical narcissistic behavior as she doesn’t seem to realize that in order to have a friend……you must be a friend.I regret purchasing and reading this book. It reminded me that there are some very shallow and superficial people in this world who go through life careening from one thing to another never noticing or caring who they’ve hurt along the way.

⭐ Maybe I should have given two stars because I did learn a couple things from reading this: (1) Publishing industry is really missing out on talent by only hiring from a pool consisting of children of 1%ers. And yes, if you require a degree in NYC and expect people to make their way through internships, then you are missing out on talent who can’t afford to live/work for free. And if this girl is considered to be a talented writer, I assume that’s why. (2) If you buy this book, you are contributing to an addict.I’ve been an addict. It’s horrible. I recovered in part because I wasn’t funded. This book, however, is worse.

⭐ RECONSIDER! Before you invest money or time in this book, think twice. This woman’s journey through addiction is not redemptive, insightful or thoughtful. Based on her writing she appears superficial, spoiled and completely devoid of the self awareness that it takes to be on a path of sobriety (Spoiler: She doesn’t get sober despite her many romps in rehabs around the world). But that appears to be ok with her. Still being supported by her codependent support system, she is content to glorify her years as an addict because she was a beauty editor, who’s personal hero was Courtney Love. (Yes! I’m serious!). The book is tedious to the point of painful as she recounts bad choice after bad choice. SKIP IT!

⭐ I have to admit, at first this was a “page-turner” but I became disillusioned with the author when she made no attempt to save her life rather than murder it despite support from parents, grandmother, sister and colleagues. I was so disappointed at the ending (spoiler alert) when she seemed to revel in her addiction. I had hoped she would pull herself out. The writing is very good but the subject matter is horrifying: sex with disgusting near-strangers, using every type of drug she could get her hands on – I just didn’t understand. What got her to that point? She never says. Her early life certainly did not point to the type of adult she became. I am now sorry I contributed funds to her continuing downfall.

⭐ I first read Cat Marnell’s writing when she worked for Vice. While brilliant, you could see the disease of addiction winning with each article. Yet, her honesty, unique viewpoints and writing hooked me. Then she disappeared.Then her book was published. Wow, she is lucky to be alive.While the road to recovery is different for every addict, the path she has chosen since the start of this book is working for her not against her. The roller coaster ride we are all on took her to the place where the tracks disappear and she went to the shadowlands where you do not do well with reality. Especially as you meet the nocturnal, broken creatures that share your hidden world.The hurt family members and the damaged relationships are the cost of addiction. She holds nothing back in this book. I found it hard to put down once I read the first chapter. I love her way of expressing herself in words.Great writing, great storyline and most important, it’s honest.I look forward to the sequel.

⭐ Marnell’s infatuation with her own edgy charismatic emptiness is a delicious rubberneckingly fun read but leaves you feeling dirty (yet grateful that you aren’t her).

⭐ Written on adderall. Poorly formed sentences, run on sentences, self congratulatory behavior that is like a teenage girl. Yuch. DISSAPPOINTED. SHE CANT WRITE. NO HEMINGWAY HERE.

⭐ I’ve been meaning to read this memoir since it was published and kept forgetting to. I finally got round to it as one of my summer beach reads.If you’re a fan of addiction memoirs then you’ll love it. It’s better than most I have read and I have read a LOT.No, she doesn’t write the oft’ told addiction redemption arc – which is the format so many addiction memoirs follow – and one they encourage addicts to use when sharing in AA etc. (The first twenty minutes of any hour long story focuses on the using then after that it’s all apologies and going straight). The problem with self-reported clean time is that it’s often a lie. That’s what I love about this, it’s honest and refreshingly in your face. Cat admits she still uses at the end.I love the details about working at Condé Nast and being a semi-functioning addict. I can relate to stumbling through glitzy press trips; funnily enough I was also thrown out of a press event by security and told my uber was waiting.If you’e the type to laugh out loud at a story about being told to leave your apartment share by Nev ‘Catfish’ Shulman with his main gripe being that he found one of his many missing silver service spoons “covered in crack” in your bedroom then this, my friends, is the book for you.If you want a grovelling, apologetic story of addiction that gives you a shot of schaudenfreud, then move along.Cat is hilarious with bags of life experience to draw from and a great writer, plus she’s young still. I expect bigger and better things to come as she gets older. I can’t wait.

⭐ You will be shocked that Cat lives through not just the drug abuse, but also the self-loathing & predatory, horrific treatment by her “best friend.” Somehow she manages describe the horror with wit and sarcasm – such talent! Even though she never attains complete sobriety, it’s comforting to see she eventually, mostly, kicked the drugs….mostly.

⭐ I thoroughly enjoyed this brutally honest depiction while battling our disease for our lives. Most of the subject matter but way too close for comfort! We are the LUCKY Few who live to tell the stories of our lives! Many fellow addicts are NOT so fortunate.GREAT job focusing on the UNPLEASANT, Gory details as well, all the while intersecting a steady stream of humor! I recommend this read for anyone who’s life or loved ones life has been effected by this deadly disease! A GREAT example of the Happiness and Stability that can be developed when one does the hard work of picking up the pieces…

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