Five Novels With Alcoholic Characters and Themes

Fictional Alcoholics Abound in Many Novels of the 1980s

Jun 4, 2009

Fictional accounts of alcoholics and their lives can sometimes provide readers with much-needed insight into the disease. Here are just a few novels to consider.

In the following novels, mostly from the 1980s, are alcoholics from all walks of life, struggling with many different facets of the disease. From a drunk cop to the child of two alcoholics, from Mississippi to the borough of Queens, from emotional pain to alcoholic delirium, the characters and plots give the reader insights into the complex world of alcoholism.

The New York Times Book Review called this novel a “psychological portraiture of a high order, and like all profound portraits it finds in its subject astonishing contradictions”. The book tells the story of Wade Whitehouse, an alcoholic policeman in his early forties. Like many town drunks, he’s basically a good-hearted fellow, who would like to quit drinking, but his life just keeps getting worse until he “loses it” and goes on a murderous rampage. Then he just disappears into a frightening New Hampshire winter. This novel reminds us that alcoholics are complex individuals with mental, physical, emotional and spiritual shortcomings.

In this novel the fictional alcoholic is named Owen Morrison. Owen comes from a long line of hard-drinking male chauvinists in Queens, New York. The generations of families affected by alcoholism, the spouses whose lives are destroyed and the jargon of Queens all blend together in a “highly intense drama of two desperate people fighting for their lives”, according to Best Sellers.

The heroine in this novel is a Mississippi girl named Jane who is the adolescent daughter of alcoholic parents. According to the New York Times Book Review, Jane’s “thoughts, attitudes and emotional responses are brilliant and convey perfectly the awful, racking struggle for psychological survival children [of alcoholics] go through”. Experiencing Jane’s emotional pain along with her creates a deeply moving and illuminating scenario for this very interesting novel.

It is easy to forget that this is a work of fiction, because the author writes with a “complete lack of literary pretensions”, according to Book Week. It is the psychological study of a drunkard whose life story is recounted during five eventful days. Don Biram, an intelligent, charming and well-read man, spends a few days alone and struggles with his overwhelming desire for alcohol. Jackson uses “flashbacks, stream of consciousness, mind wandering, twisted recollection and alcoholic delirium” in a spectacular fashion as he describes Don’s agony.

Maggie Elliott’s wealthy half-sister is killed in a suspicious cable car wreck, and shortly afterwards her niece dies in an airplane crash. The ensuing investigation, in which Maggie meets ex-cop Richard Patrick O’Reagan, brings up many psychological issues. Publisher’s Weekly tells us that “Maggie’s feelings about her alcoholism are insightful and interesting. Taylor gives us a humdinger of a final scene filled with dire threats and spectacular action”. .

Alcoholism is a deadly disease, called “cunning, powerful and baffling” in the Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous. These few fictional accounts offer just a small window into the vast world of alcoholism and alcoholics.

The copyright of the article Five Novels With Alcoholic Characters and Themes in Substance Abuse Recovery is owned by Marie Brannon. Permission to republish Five Novels With Alcoholic Characters and Themes in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.