“The Recovering,” after all, is something of a love story, or a series of overlapping love stories, or a story about the moment that love fails. It is the history of Jamison’s drinking, while at the same time it seeks to wrestle with the very question of drinking and what it means. Or perhaps it’s that intoxication is too much, all-consuming, until everything else (love, work, identity) is churned up in its wake. Burnes’ presence highlights one of the brilliant, and unexpected, moves in “The Recovering”: Jamison’s decision to make room for other voices, other experiences. Bret Hartman/ For The Times Leslie Jamison during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, 2014 Leslie Jamison during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, 2014 (Bret Hartman/ For The Times)“You’re special — it’s OK,” she quotes David Foster Wallace, “but so’s the guy across the table who’s raising two kids sober and rebuilding a ’73 Mustang.

Source: Los Angeles Times March 29, 2018 16:52 UTC