Review: Interesting both for the struggle against additction and the historical aspect
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 16, 2013
Courage to Surrender is one man's memoir that recalls his struggle with substance abuse. He candidly tells us as much of his history as he can, from his days as a rebellious youth trying to gain the approval of an aloof father, to his days dodging the draft and beyond. The memoir is pretty powerful, and I was kept interested for the duration of the book for both the history of John W. (who seems to have lived a pretty exciting life) as the major historical events that play into the narrative. The 60s, 70s etc were interesting times.The author is able to provide a vivid image of the turbulent times he lived through, and the vast amount of colorful characters he interacted with who had some hand in ultimately shaping the kind of person he became. Despite this, the writing is problematic in places. Commas are often missing where they're needed, creating run-on sentences, or inserted where they're no needed. Sometimes the syntax of sentences is way off. It's still understandable, but more editing would have helped. It's not too long a tale, which helps keep it from overstaying its welcome, and I liked the honesty of the memoir. We see his high points and the lowest lows of his substance abuse.