God what is it with me and books about alcoholics? Every book I pick up at the moment seems to be about sad men with drinking problems.
And the problem with a drinking problem is that it is fairly dull. You get drunk. You promise yourself you won’t drink again. You do. Etc. I appreciate it must be terrible to live through, but after the first three or four books it is pretty terrible to read through too.
I couldn’t even finish this book, not just because it was boring, but because it was really A LOT. Try this extract, which is, I’m sorry to say to you, about sex:
But he could feel now, too, trying the prelude, the prepatory nostalgic phrases on his wife’s senses, the image of his possession, like that jeweled gate the desperate neophyte, Yesod-bound, projects for the thousandth time on the heavens to permit passage of his astral body, fading, and slowly, inexorably, that of a cantina, when in dead silence and peace it first opens in the morning, taking its place.
I mean: ASTRAL BODY?