Bill Clegg is een literair agent en auteur wiens werk duikt in de diepten van de menselijke psyche. Zijn schrijven verkent de complexiteit van relaties en de strijd van het individu met innerlijke demonen. Zijn stijl is scherpzinnig en gevoelig, en onthult de fragiliteit van het menselijk bestaan.
What makes one of the most gifted, charismatic and successful young literary agents in New York fall into full-blown crack-addiction: a collapse that would cost him his business, his home, many of his friends and - very nearly - his life?
The goal is ninety--just ninety clean and sober days to loosen the hold of the addiction that caused Bill Clegg to lose everything. Six weeks out of his most recent rehab, Clegg returns to New York and starts attending two or three meetings each day. It is in these refuges that he befriends essential new allies including Polly, who struggles daily with her own cycle of recovery and relapse, and the seemingly unshakably sober Asa. At first, the support is not enough: Clegg relapses with only three days left. That's when the battle to reclaim his life gets reignited. As any recovering addict knows, hitting rock bottom is just the beginning.
A hilarious and heartwarming debut set on the Cornish coast, perfect for fans of Catherine Alliott, Lucy Diamond and Fiona Gibson.
What makes one of the most gifted, charismatic and successful literary agents in New York fall into full-blown crack-addiction: a collapse that would cost him his business, his home, many of his friends and - very nearly - his life?
This book of dark secrets opens with a blaze. On the morning of her daughter's wedding, June Reid's house goes up in flames, destroying her entire family - her present, her past and her future. Fleeing from the carnage, stricken and alone, June finds herself in a motel room by the ocean, hundreds of miles from her Connecticut home, held captive by memories and the mistakes she has made with her only child, Lolly, and her partner, Luke. In the turbulence of grief and gossip left in June's wake we slowly make sense of the unimaginable. The novel is a gathering of voices, and each testimony has a new revelation about what led to the catastrophe - Luke's alienated mother Lydia, the watchful motel owners, their cleaner Cissy, the teenage pothead who lives nearby - everyone touched by the tragedy finds themselves caught in the undertow, as their secret histories finally come to light. Lit by the clarity of understanding that true sadness brings, Did You Ever Have a Family is an elegant, unforgettable story that reveals humanity at its worst and best, through loss and love, fracture and forgiveness. At the book's heart is the idea of family - the ones we are born with and the ones we create - and the desire, in the face of everything, to go on living.
Bill Clegg had a thriving business as a literary agent, representing a growing list of writers. He had a supportive partner, trusting colleagues, and loving friends when he walked away from his world and embarked on a two-month crack binge. He had been released from rehab nine months earlier, and his relapse would cost him his home, his money, his career, and very nearly his life. What is it that leads an exceptional young mind to want to disappear? Clegg makes stunningly clear the attraction of the drug that had him in its thrall, capturing in scene after scene the drama, tension, and paranoiac nightmare of a secret life-and the exhilarating bliss that came again and again until it was eclipsed almost entirely by doom. PORTRAIT OF AN ADDICT AS A YOUNG MAN is an utterly compelling narrative-lyrical, irresistible, harsh, and honest-from which you simply cannot look away.
'A writer with a profound comprehension of emotional destruction, loss and redemption' Sunday Times A retired widow in rural Connecticut wakes to an unexpected visit from her childhood best friend whom she hasn't seen in forty-nine years. A man arrives at a Bethlehem, Pennsylvania hotel to introduce his estranged father to his newborn daughter and finds him collapsed on the floor of the lobby. A sixty-seven-year-old taxi driver in Kauai receives a phone call from the mainland that jars her back to a traumatic past. These seemingly disconnected lives come together as half-century-old secrets begin to surface over the course of one fateful day...
Finally getting the keys to an allotment was Steph Herrington's late husband's dream - not hers! But working together in the plot with her daughter Jessie, she begins to remember that there's no sunshine without rain... and perhaps this is the fresh start they always needed!
Das Ziel ist 90. 90 Tage clean. Nach 73 Tagen in der Entzugsklinik will Bill Clegg in New York die Arbeit wiederaufnehmen. Ein Leben soll wieder in seine Fugen. Drei Tage vor dem Ziel wird er rückfällig. Mit kompromissloser Direktheit beginnt ›Neunzig Tage‹ dort, wo ›Porträt eines Süchtigen als junger Mann‹ aufhörte. Doch der nächste Tiefpunkt ist immer bloß der Anfang. Der Entzug ist wie ein Kartenhaus, das jeden Moment einstürzen kann. Bill Clegg erzählt brutal ehrlich, voll literarischer Sensibilität und erschütternd authentisch eine wahre Geschichte. Seine Geschichte. »Bill Clegg ist genauso besessen von Sprache wie er es früher von Crack war.« A. L. Kennedy