Fury: A Memoir
Zailckas, who was dubbed “the face of teenage binge drinking” for her best-selling coming-of-age memoir Smashed (2005), offers another raw, memorable chronicle of emotional recovery. The project’s trajectory is eerie. While researching a book on anger, Zailckas falls for a British rock musician and follows him to England, where they break up in a seismic night of bitterness and rage. Back home with her parents, twentysomething Zailckas attempts to pull herself out of catatonic grief with homeopathic remedies and endless reading: “I think I can elude my own emotions by crawling into my research and dying there.” Incorporating quotes from diverse sources, from psychologists and psychiatrists to peace activists and even Shakespeare and Nabokov, Zailckas connects theories about anger with her own life experiences, and what begins as an abstract inquiry into anger becomes, in fact, an intimate, lyrical portrait of a young woman’s discovery of love and understanding. More than the numerous quotes from authoritative voices, all meticulously sourced in an appendix, it’s Zailckas’ confessional, vivid personal stories that will stay with readers. --Gillian Engberg