epub | 1.16 MB | English | Isbn:9781662602252 | Author: Michael Deagler | Year: 2024

About ebook: Early Sobrieties: A Novel

""Just give me one more day" Monk says and "Early Sobrieties"is such a wise and piercing book that we believe him."
-Charlie Lee The New York Times Book Review

"Michael Deagler is the real deal."
-Percival Everett 2023 Windham Campbell Prize recipient and author of Dr. No

Don't worry about what Dennis Monk did when he was drinking. He's sober now ready to rejoin the world of leases and paychecks reciprocal friendships and healthy romances-if only the world would agree to take him back. When his working-stiff parents kick him out of their suburban home mere months into his frangible sobriety the 26-year-old spends his first dry summer couch surfing through South Philadelphia struggling to find a place for himself in the throng of adulthood.

Monk's haphazard pilgrimage leads him through a city in flux: growing gentrifying haunted by its history and its unrealized potential. Everyone he knew from college seems to be doing better than him-and most of them aren't even doing that well. His run-ins with former classmates estranged drinking buddies and prospective lovers challenge his version of events past and present revealing that recovery is not the happy ending he'd expected only a fraught next chapter.

Like a sober millennial Jesus' Son Michael Deagler's debut novel is the poignant confession of a recovering addict adrift in the fragmenting landscape of America's middle class. Shot through with humor hubris and hard-earned insight Early Sobrieties charts the limbos that exist between our better and worst selves offering a portrait of a stifled generation collectively slouching towards grace.