A. A. Gill`s memoir begins in the dark of a dormitory with six strangers. He is an alcoholic, dying in the last-chance saloon
- driven to dry out, not out of a desire to change but mainly through weariness. He tells the truth
- as far as he can remember it
- about drinking & about what it is like to be drunk. Pour Me is about the black-outs, the collapse, the despair: ` Pockets were a constant source of surprise
- a lamb chop, a votive candle, earrings, notes written on paper & ripped from books, ` & even, once, a pigeon. ` Morning pockets, ` he says, `were like tiny crime scenes.` He recalls the lost days, lost friends, failed marriages.. . But there was also `an optimum inebriation, a time when it was all golden, when the drink & the pleasure made sense & were brilliant`. Sobriety regained, there are painterly descriptions of people & places, unforgettable musings about childhood & family, art & religion, friendships & fatherhood; &, most movingly, the connections between his cooking, dyslexia & his missing brother. Full of raw & unvarnished truths, exquisitely written throughout, Pour Me is about lost time & self-discovery. Lacerating, unflinching, uplifting, it is a classic about drunken abandon.