A Head Full of Blue by Nick Johnstone

My review of Nick Johnstone's memoir, originally published on Goodreads:


The thing that struck me most about this memoir are the brilliant metaphors and similes, which make the reader feel sensations from the viewpoint of an alcoholic. Here's one for example, when author Nick Johnstone is ravenously thirsting after a glass of champagne:

"I could hear its tiny bubbles breaking and shattering like crystals falling on a stone floor."

Or this one, when he imagines himself drinking the forbidden champagne (as a former alcoholic):

"[...] the champagne [scorches] my throat and oesophagus and then that wonderful calm like a rusty old anchor being dropped into the ocean in slow motion."

I sometimes find metaphors and similes too "reaching", but only about once in this book I found a metaphor slightly contrived. Nick Johnstone uses them so well, he really makes the reader feel his images viscerally. Certainly the closest I've come to seeing from the point of view of an alcoholic.

This book is life-affirming (yes, that old book-review cliche)- but in a morbid kind of way. It's very concerned with death, almost obsessed with it. It isn't until the last few pages that there's much positivity. There are flashes of it every so often, but as soon as Johnstone hints at something positive in one of his vignettes, he ends it on a negative note. For me, this narrative rhythm became quite repetitive and predictable.

All in all though, a very well-written memoir, but a depressing one, all about human frailty.