Lessons and Carols: A Meditation on Recovery

West, a technologist at the Wall Street Journal, considers his recovery from addiction in his searing if scattered debut. The author organizes his reflections loosely around the Nine Lessons and Carols of the Christmas worship service, touching on substance abuse, mental health, and religious identity. West discusses the suicidal thoughts that emerged as an adolescent and landed him in a psychiatric ward, and later became intertwined with his alcoholism. As West grappled with his sexuality in college, his drinking worsened and became tightly linked to a desire for connection: “I know that wanting love does not mean wanting sex does not mean wanting a drink does not mean wanting greatness,” he writes, “but they are bound up for me.” The author eventually wound up in rehab, where he stitched together a fragile sense of self-understanding. Now a parent, West is riven by the love and anxiety of fatherhood, and prays “that I will stay sober, that this baby will live her life unconcerned with sobriety.” While West’s writing is affectingly raw and often lyrical, the slack narrative structure can be distracting and tends to obscure moments of emotional insight. Patient readers will make the most of this touching if imperfect memoir. (May)