Reviewed by: BigAl
Genre: Memoir
Approximate word count: 65-70,000 words
Availability
Click
on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or
Smashwords store
Author:
Biographical
information is limited to the obvious, the book description. However, the book does
have a page on Facebook and the author has a blog.
Description:
“Closet
Full of Coke tells the story of how a New York suburban fifteen-year-old girl's
savvy, grit, and wit helps turn the small-time drug business of Armando, a
Colombian drug dealer, into a multi-million-dollar operation that puts them on
the DEA's Wanted List.
This
intimate diary gives readers a fast-paced glimpse of the couple’s speedy rise
to riches, and their inevitable descent.”
Appraisal:
A memoir
such as this works on at least two levels. First, as a human-interest story.
What motivates someone to make what, in retrospect, is a series of bad
decisions? We see how easy it is for setbacks in life to send someone down the
wrong path and that it is easy for a person to see the positives of taking a
particular route while ignoring the negatives.
But Closet Full of Coke also works as a
story to entertain or a means of escape from the real world, just as much as a
novel. It has a novel like story arc, characters that fit the same patterns you
might see in a novel, and if it hadn’t been made clear in the beginning that it
was a true story, you could easily convince yourself that it was fiction with a
first person point of view. I was trying to anticipate where the story would
go, as I would with a novel, and found myself guessing based on how the
fictional world works rather than the real world.
My only
minor complaint is that this book cries out for an “afterword.” There is an
author’s note that gives a brief update on one of the characters, but I would
like to have known what happened to some of the others. At a minimum, in the
twenty or thirty years since the events in the story happened, give us a
summary of where the author ended up.
FYI:
Adult
language and situations
Format/Typo Issues:
No
significant issues
Rating: **** Four stars
2 comments:
Thanks for the review! My website closetfullofcoke.com has more info on the people in the book. I agree the book needs an afterword but I've yet to figure out how to summarize my life since those dark days. I might need to write another memoir... I call Closet Full of Coke "Memoir Noir" because the events I wrote about destroyed my life permanently. I have been feverishly seeking redemption these past thirty years and I have yet to find it, so let my story be a cautionary tale. ~ Indra
Sounds like a fascinating read---I will check it out! I like that it's not formulaic or about redemption. I have no judgmentality toward people making "dark" choices in life, as it's all part of the All-That-Is that makes the world diverse. It's all about the experience.
Thanks Big Al... and Indra.
Post a Comment