Pour Me a Life - Hardcover

Gill s story holds up a mirror with which to evaluate one s own ugly and beautiful jaunts through life. His is not a tale told with a clear beginning, middle, or end; it is, however, chock full of wit and humanity, and enhanced by Gill s striking gift for prose.
"Publishers Weekly""

[A] brutally honest memoir.
"Kirkus Reviews"
Gill s story holds up a mirror with which to evaluate one s own ugly and beautiful jaunts through life. His is not a tale told with a clear beginning, middle, or end; it is, however, chock full of wit and humanity, and enhanced by Gill s striking gift for prose.
"Publishers Weekly""

Pour Me a Life is an unapologetically honest, raw, and often harrowing account of the life of a man who, up until now, we only thought we knew. Here is A.A. Gill at his best. A real-life Bright Lights, Big City.
Eric Ripert, chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin, and author of the New York Times bestseller 32 Yolks
[A] brutally honest memoir.
Kirkus Reviews
Gill s story holds up a mirror with which to evaluate one s own ugly and beautiful jaunts through life. His is not a tale told with a clear beginning, middle, or end; it is, however, chock full of wit and humanity, and enhanced by Gill s striking gift for prose.
Publishers Weekly
Gill writes passionately and movingly about his struggle with dyslexia; disarmingly and defensively about his lifelong feelings of intellec-tual insecurity; evocatively about his relationships with his parents and the disappearance of his brother [and] stirringly about his love of journalism.
Matthew Adams, The Independent (UK)
Pour Me a Life is alert, emphatic, mordant, unforgiving. It is often moving, but never tries to be likeable. . . . [Gill s] gallows comedy gives a hefty kick, many sections are beautifully droll, and some scenes are hilarious.
Richard Davenport-Hines, The Sunday Times (UK)
Gill is a brilliant raconteur, and a gifted satirist of place and person. . . . The baroque debauchery of his drinking days gives way to frank and often moving examinations of his growing up . . . [of] his loves and lusts and marriages, and his own efforts at fatherhood: the role that has done most to keep him sober.
Tim Adams, The Observer (UK)
In this chilling, exquisitely moving book, Gill defines the seductive, addictive and destructive power of drink. . . . It is his honesty that accounts for the intensity of this haunting memoir.
Juliet Nicolson, The Telegraph (UK)"

Often amusing but always profound It is Gill s three decades of continuous sobriety that distinguish Pour Me, A Life from the legions of other alcohol memoirs out there at its core, a remarkable and revealing book.
Karen Brady, The Buffalo News
Pour Me a Life is an unapologetically honest, raw, and often harrowing account of the life of a man who, up until now, we only thought we knew. Here is A.A. Gill at his best. A real-life Bright Lights, Big City.
Eric Ripert, chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin, and author of the New York Times bestseller 32 Yolks
[A] brutally honest memoir.
Kirkus Reviews
Gill s story holds up a mirror with which to evaluate one s own ugly and beautiful jaunts through life. His is not a tale told with a clear beginning, middle, or end; it is, however, chock full of wit and humanity, and enhanced by Gill s striking gift for prose.
Publishers Weekly
Gill writes passionately and movingly about his struggle with dyslexia; disarmingly and defensively about his lifelong feelings of intellec-tual insecurity; evocatively about his relationships with his parents and the disappearance of his brother [and] stirringly about his love of journalism.
Matthew Adams, The Independent (UK)
Pour Me a Life is alert, emphatic, mordant, unforgiving. It is often moving, but never tries to be likeable. . . . [Gill s] gallows comedy gives a hefty kick, many sections are beautifully droll, and some scenes are hilarious.
Richard Davenport-Hines, The Sunday Times (UK)
Gill is a brilliant raconteur, and a gifted satirist of place and person. . . . The baroque debauchery of his drinking days gives way to frank and often moving examinations of his growing up . . . [of] his loves and lusts and marriages, and his own efforts at fatherhood: the role that has done most to keep him sober.
Tim Adams, The Observer (UK)
In this chilling, exquisitely moving book, Gill defines the seductive, addictive and destructive power of drink. . . . It is his honesty that accounts for the intensity of this haunting memoir.
Juliet Nicolson, The Telegraph (UK)"

"Often amusing but always profound...It is Gill's three decades of continuous sobriety that distinguish Pour Me, A Life from the legions of other alcohol memoirs out there...at its core, a remarkable and revealing book."
--Karen Brady, The Buffalo News

"Pour Me a Life is an unapologet-ically honest, raw, and often har-rowing account of the life of a man who, up until now, we only thought we knew. Here is A.A. Gill at his best. A real-life Bright Lights, Big City."
--Eric Ripert, chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin, and author of the New York Times bestseller 32 Yolks

"[A] brutally honest memoir."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Gill's story holds up a mirror with which to evaluate one's own ugly and beautiful jaunts through life. His is not a tale told with a clear beginning, middle, or end; it is, how-ever, chock full of wit and humanity, and enhanced by Gill's striking gift for prose."
--Publishers Weekly

"Gill writes passionately and mov-ingly about his struggle with dys-lexia; disarmingly and defensively about his lifelong feelings of intellec-tual insecurity; evocatively about his relationships with his parents and the disappearance of his brother [and] stirringly about his love of journalism."
--Matthew Adams, The Independent (UK)

"Pour Me a Life is alert, emphatic, mordant, unforgiving. It is often moving, but never tries to be like-able. . . . [Gill's] gallows comedy gives a hefty kick, many sections are beautifully droll, and some scenes are hilarious."
--Richard Davenport-Hines, The Sunday Times (UK)

"Gill is a brilliant raconteur, and a gifted satirist of place and person. . . . The baroque debauchery of his drinking days gives way to frank and often moving examinations of his growing up . . . [of] his loves and lusts and marriages, and his own efforts at fatherhood: the role that has done most to keep him sober."
--Tim Adams, The Observer (UK)

"In this chilling, exquisitely moving book, Gill defines the seductive, addictive and destructive power of drink. . . . It is his honesty that accounts for the intensity of this haunting memoir."
--Juliet Nicolson, The Telegraph (UK)

Serialized in Esquire, A.A. Gill's Pour Me a Life is a riveting meditation on the author's alcoholism, seen through the lens of the memories that remain, and the transformative moments that saved him from a lifelong addiction and early death.

“Pour Me a Life is an unapologet­ically honest, raw, and often har­rowing account of the life of a man who, up until now, we only thought we knew. Here is A.A. Gill at his best. A real-life Bright Lights, Big City.” —Eric Ripert, chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin, and author of the New York Timesbestseller 32 Yolks

Best known for his hysterically funny and often scathing restaurant reviews for the London Sunday Times, A.A. Gill’s Pour Me a Life is a riveting memoir of the author’s alcoholism, seen through the lens of the memories that remain, and the transformative moments in art, food, religion, and family that saved him from a lifelong addiction and early death.

By his early twenties, at London’s prestigious Saint Martin’s art school, journalist Adrian Gill was entrenched in alcoholism. He writes from the handful of memories that remain, of drunken conquests with anonymous women, of waking to morbid hallucinations, of emptying jacket pock­ets that “were like tiny crime scenes,” helping him puzzle his whereabouts back together. Through­out his recollections, Gill traces his childhood, his early diagnosis of dyslexia, the deep sense of isolation when he was sent to boarding school at age eleven, the disappearance of his only brother, whom he has not seen for decades.

When Gill was confronted at age thirty by a doctor who questioned his drinking, he answered honestly for the first time, not because he was ready to stop, but because his body was too dam­aged to live much longer. Gill was admitted to a thirty-day rehab center—then a rare and revolu­tionary concept in England—and has lived three decades of his life sober. Written with clear-eyed honesty and empathy, Pour Me a Life is a haunting account of addiction, its exhilarating power and destructive force, and is destined to be a classic of its kind.