Somewhere at the start of this great “anti-memoir”, there’s a line about addiction which is a reminder that bad stuff in the world could be sorted if there was a will to sort it, “The problem with prevention is that it would require a full-scale revolution: necessary as it is improbable”. So left with what she’s got, Charlotte Northall in Practicing Dying, takes us through years of addiction and rehab, and it’s an absolute throat-grabber partly due to her barbed no filter sense of humour and an eagle-eye that never seems to miss the sort of detail that occasionally both horrifies, and blasts through modern life’s smoke and mirrors, “What had once been objectionable, has now been rendered tolerable with the aid of medication”. Helps, of course, that she’s a writer who is able to marshal what is often the queasy and squalid life of addiction (and ongoing ‘recovery’) into a compelling whole. And with a ‘political’, literary and interrogative mindset that sees drug taking within the context of a world addicted to everything from porn to pop-tarts (and everything in between) there’s insights aplenty. “Countless, by dint of socio-economic positioning, behave in ways deemed maladaptive, antisocial, criminal. Meanwhile, the industries and corporations that create and sustain these conditions continue to generate astronomical profits”. The eventual out for the author, Mahayana Buddhism, offering “a way to live”, but requiring the kind of effort and application that is, at the start of her Buddhist residency, way beyond what she’s capable of. Choosing and living the straight life as difficult as choosing that other life, but she gets there because, “Things at the monastery were different. Unlike therapy, the practice was not personal. It addressed only one condition - being human.” Simply, Practicing Dying is a contemporary classic, and heralds a new writer whose future work I can’t wait to read. Totally recommended.

Practicing Dying – Charlotte Northall – Publ. by Pilot Press - £14.00

Steven Long