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Overview
As a child, Alison Weaver's life shone with surface-level perfection—full of nannies, private schools, and ballet lessons. She had all the luxuries of a wealthy Manhattan upbringing, and all the makings of a perfect Upper East Side miss. But her childhood memories were laced with darker undertones: Her father was emotionally absent, unable to engage in problems that couldn't be solved with clean lines and simple plans, and her mother was a beautiful, aloof alcoholic. Neither parent approved of their daughter's outbursts and emotions—and in the midst of her parents' own flaws, Weaver was constantly reminded that she was a mess that needed fixing.
By the time she was a teenager, Weaver had found escape in alcohol, marijuana, and late-night abandon. But when her exasperated parents had her shipped away—in handcuffs—to the cultish Cascade School, everything changed. Within the surreal isolation of the school's mountain campus, she left her old self behind, warping into a brainwashed model of Cascade's mottos and ideals. Graduation two years later left her unprepared for the harshness of the real world—and she soon fell back into a mind-numbing wash of drugs. Stum-bling into freefall in New York's East Village in the 1990s, Weaver's life began a downward spiral marked by needles and late-night parties, mingled with fears of HIV and death. Ultimately, faced with the reality of her rapidly escalating self-destruction, Weaver was forced to face her inner darkness head on.
Gone to the Crazies proves the age-old adage: You can't come clean until you've hit rock bottom. By turns wry, heartbreaking, and emotionally intense, Alison Weaver's mesmerizing debut fascinates with its vivid depiction of the bonds between family and friends, and the thoughtful exploration of what it means to fight for identity and equilibrium.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780061983177 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 10/06/2009 |
| Sold by: | HARPERCOLLINS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Sales rank: | 214,493 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Alison Weaver is copublisher of the literary journal H.O.W., the proceeds of which go to needy orphans worldwide. Her work has appeared in Small Spiral Notebook, Opium magazine, Red China, and the Fifth Street Review.
Read an Excerpt
Gone to the Crazies
Chapter One
My Mother's Helpers
Nurses raised me, one after the other until I outgrew them. I had my own room: It was large, with two tall windows and pillowed window seats upholstered in light blue chintz. On the walls hung framed Italian collages of monkeys and dogs in Georgian attire, and underfoot were plush cream carpets kept spotlessly clean. I grew up an only child despite my father's two previous marriages and earlier children...three daughters and two stepsons...who we saw once or twice a year.
I know my first nurse was named Wanna, though I remember very little of her. In the pictures that linger on the pages of photo albums, she is either pushing my steel-bodied British Silver Cross baby carriage, or stands as a figure in the distance ready with a bottle or a squeaky toy. In every shot she wears a white uniform, a navy cardigan, and pink fifties-style glasses.
After Wanna, there was Ms. Bee, who sued my parents, claiming that my rambunctious behavior in the bathtub put her back out. I don't remember her at all. Then came Isabel, who let me play on the electronic toys at Hammacher Schlemmer and crawl back and forth inside the thirty-foot configurable play maze, while she "fraternized" with the male employees. Isabel liked to hit. She'd hit if I didn't eat my Jell-O or wash my face in the bath. Once, as we played Battleship, she caught me peeking at her board and decided to give me the false satisfaction of sinking all her ships before smacking me across the cheek. Isabel stayed until I was five.
But then Ilse arrived on a Friday morning in October. Mother always wanted her help to start on weekendsso they'd be comfortable with my father's presence in the house. Mother also made it a point to hire older women who lacked any beauty or sex appeal. Lead him not into temptation, she must have thought, sipping from her wine glass.
Ilse was in her fifties. Her black hair was streaked with lights of silver and her eyes were a deep liquid brown, almost tragic in their intensity. Chubby, flushed cheeks, curved with sensitivity and exhaustion, held a perpetual smile in place, and her stocky, willful figure...unathletic yet surprisingly mobile...was stiffened by an arthritic ache on winter nights. At first, I was terrified of her touch. I froze when she kissed me goodnight and squirmed when she hugged me or held my hand. If she invited me into her room at night, I'd sit on the floor with my knees clasped to my chest and my back against the wall.
Ilse smelled of fresh sheets and thick, white Nivea cream, and the smell gradually instilled an unusual comfort in me. Eventually, we spent our evenings on her twin bed watching Family Feud or The Price Is Right. She introduced me to Chuckles candies and HoneyBee suckers with buttery insides, and taught me how to speak German. If I had a nightmare, she'd tickle my back until I fell asleep, and if her arthritic hands ached, I'd massage them with the thick, white lotion.
From the start, I lived most of my days in worlds that didn't really exist. The real world frightened me. I didn't fit. Other children were different: happy, approved of.
I chose to insulate myself from the outside by creating my own fantasy worlds, places where I felt alive and strong. I created imaginary friends. Some dwelled in the porcelain bodies of my dolls and others simply drifted about the playroom in ethereal form, handing me a piece of chalk when I needed one or being my opponent in a game of Chinese checkers. They played with me for hours in the attic, where I taught them spelling and math, chalking on the blackboard as they sat lethargically in a semicircle. I created entire block countries and governments to run them, relegating certain Cabbage Patch dolls to positions of power and giving myself the position of dictator. I directed productions of The Sound of Music every Saturday at 2 pm and sold handmade tickets. Occasionally, the cook or the maid would humor me and purchase one for five cents, but they showed up only rarely. The shows, however, went on anyway.
I was an adventurous child, outspoken and precocious. I didn't like fancy dresses and I didn't care for shoes, and I was constantly removing both whenever an opportunity arose. I liked dirt and making mud pies and wading through stagnant water to catch frogs and tadpoles. Blood didn't frighten me; neither did ghosts or dead people.
I could sit cross-legged for hours on the mossy stone wall in the middle of the strand of Connecticut woods that divided our property from the neighbors', surrounded by tall sapping pine trees and gargantuan oaks. Their roots seemed to tunnel so deeply into the ground, I imagined they came out on the other side of the earth. Sometimes, I'd pretend to be Huck Finn or Laura Ingalls Wilder or one of the fairies from The Green Fairy book. I was myself only in the briefest of moments, only when the outside world demanded it of me.
Gone to the Crazies. Copyright © by Alison Weaver. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.What People are Saying About This
“A talented young writer with a fertile ground from which to make sense of her complex story.”
“Gone to the Crazies is a stark and powerful debut.”
“[An] amazingly sane and graceful book . . . Weaver is a sure-handed storyteller and a clear-eyed observer.”
“A wise and eloquent book...in Weaver’s expert hands the drug addiction and rehabilitation memoir has finally come of age.”