SOURCE: "The High Life from the Bottom of a Bottle," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, June 9, 1996, p. 6.

[Houghton is an American writer. In the mixed review of Drinking: A Love Story below, she praises Knapp's depiction of her own addiction but faults her portrayal of other alcoholics.]

A love story dances on water. The music moves us farther from shore, starts a twinkle in our eyes, and we are new again. Bottle that feeling and you could be King. It's the Holy Grail to an alcoholic. Caroline Knapp is the latest to throw her hat in the ring, dazzling us with her heady description of alcohol's allure and its devastating hold, a high that is near impossible to sustain. In this memoir [Drinking: A Love Story] by the 36-year-old recovering alcoholic, shelves of experience and feeling tend to get neatly labeled and wrapped up with a "here...