Ninety Days

February 13, 2012
In this stark memoir, a follow-up to Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man, literary agent and author Clegg describes his struggle to stay clean . Returning to New York City after a stint in rehab, Clegg faces the ruin he’s made of his life: his literary agency has closed, his lover has moved on, and he faces mounting debts with no income to speak of. Making matters worse, in spite of the many meetings Clegg attends, he’s helplessly drawn to vice. Many organizations dealing with substance abuse emphasize 90 days sober as a real signpost toward recovery. Clegg discovers that reaching that signpost is going to take him a lot longer than three months. Clegg’s spare, nearly minimalist style complements the drama inherent in his material: it’s addition through subtraction. At first, his understated approach can seem sketchy, even vague, but the effect is cumulative. By focusing on the struggle through each gray day, Clegg draws the reader into his claustrophobic existence. His distance from both his character and the world short-circuits the addiction memoir tendency toward melodrama. When specific details do seep in—selling his mother’s silver, a drug-fueled threesome—the impact is powerful. With understated craft, Clegg has written a harrowing story.

February 1, 2012
A recovering crack addict traverses the slippery slopes of sobriety, only to find the possibility of relapse around every corner. Fresh out of rehab, Clegg (Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man, 2010) haunted the streets of his former hometown broke, busted and barely able to suppress his old cravings. Prior to his addiction, he was a hotshot literary agent. After, he was penned into a few blocks bounded by "trigger" zones his sponsor warned were absolutely off-limits. The desire to use again is omnipresent, and his story is littered with lies, betrayals and debauched sex. Eventually Clegg realized that the next step in his dismal descent was surely death. The author writes with astonishing honesty, infusing the intensely interior narrative with powerful imagery and penetrating insights. Even the short journeys to his daily support groups sound like heroic odysseys--though Clegg is no hero. The outcome is never assured, and there are casualties among the sharply drawn characters, most of whom the author seems to know as intimately as his own psyche. Three scant months may not seem like a long time, but for all involved it was an epic period of transformation. At turns cautionary and inspirational, Clegg's saga embraces both the weaknesses and strengths of human nature, while only alluding to the possibility of salvation. A gritty, lyrical and potent portrait of what it really means to be addicted.

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November 15, 2011

Aiming to stay clean and sober for 90 days, recovering addict Clegg initially lapsed with three days to go. But he persevered. Clegg has the writing skills to convey his harrowing experience, as evidenced by his highly praised Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 1, 2012
Seventy-three days after leaving drug rehab, and having lost his lover, a career, money, self-respect, and the trust of friends and family members who had supported him, Clegg is back on the streets of New York. The challenge is to string together 90 consecutive days of sobriety. Can he do it? By fits and starts, with the help of his sponsor and other addicts, Clegg starts a regime of going to rehab support meetings, sometimes three times a day. Despite a mandate to stay away from triggers, including his dealer, the temptations are everywhere. The same is true for his compatriots, including Polly, whose drug-addicted twin, Heather, is an obstacle to her sister's recovery. Clegg is brutally honest in assessing the experiences and personal shortcomings that led to his addiction, including an examination of his parents' marriage, which failed because of his father's alcoholism. This is a raw chronicle of repeated failure and repeated efforts at redemption on the harrowing road to recovery. Clegg follows his gut-wrenching Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man (2010) with an equally stark tale of the hard and ongoing work of recovering from addiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)