The Adderall Diaries

August 31, 2009
As a writer stymied by past success, writers block, substance abuse, relationship problems and a serious set of father issues, Elliott's cracked-out chronicle of a bizarre murder trial amounts to less than the sum of its parts. Not long into the 2007 trial of programmer Hans Reiser, accused of murdering his wife, the defendant's friend Sean Sturgeon obliquely confessed to several murders (though not the murder of Reiser's wife). Elliott, caught up in the film-ready twist and his tenuous connection to Sturgeon (they share a BDSM social circle), makes a gonzo record of the proceedings. The result is a scattered, self-indulgent romp through the mind of a depressive narcissist obsessed with his insecurities and childhood traumas. Elliott is an undeniably good writer, but his voice has more to do with amphetamines than the author himself or the trial at hand. Elliott's frustration with himself is contagious; any readers expecting a true crime will be bewildered, and those familiar with Elliott (My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up) will find more (or less) of the same.

Starred review from August 1, 2009
An endlessly fascinating memoir by a profoundly courageous writer.

Novelist and cultural critic Elliott (My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up, 2006, etc.) has plumbed his difficult life for his novels and short stories. A runaway at age 13, following his mother's death, he spent years in group homes around Chicago, engaging in petty crimes and developing addictions to heroin and other narcotics, rather than stay with his violence-prone sadistic father. As he began his latest book, Elliott was just resuming a daily regimen of Adderall ingestion. Off the drug, he lost the focus to write anything. Back on it and experimenting with means of enhancing its amphetamine-like effects, his mind still raced, but he was better able to channel his energies into writing down his rapid-fire thoughts. His new book, he decided, would be about a murder trial getting underway in San Francisco, where he had settled after a restless post-adolescence period. In the spring of 2007, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Hans Reiser was accused of killing his Russian-born wife Nina, whose body had yet to be found. The author's interest in the case was sparked by a confession of Reiser's best friend Sean Sturgeon, with whom Nina had an affair. The confession reminded Elliott of his father's odd story that he killed a man who had publicly humiliated him the year before Elliott was born. Despite the luridness of the subject matter, the author creates a refined, beautiful work of art. His themes—seemingly crime, murder, drugs and sadomasochistic sex—actually encapsulate the nature of truth, self, love and memory, and the limits of art to get at them all.

Deserves a place on the shelf next to such classics of uninhibited American introspection as On the Road and A Fan's Notes.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 1, 2009
Elliotts searing novels offer glimpses into his hellish childhood. He now tells the full raw true story of his mothers cruel death, his diabolical fathers brutality, his escapades and terrors as a homeless teen and group-home inmate, and his masochistic sexuality in a daring and riveting memoir of acute observation and astringent honesty. For all the trauma and heartbreak he survived, not to mention the tenacity of his depression and dependence on Adderall (a form of amphetamine), Elliott remains intently curious and utterly devoted to the healing alchemy of clear, lacerating language. Inspired by the blood-dark lyricism of Norman Mailer and Truman Capote, Elliott not only pieces together chilling (his urge to be hurt and humiliated) and mordantly funny (his dot-com interlude) stories from his rough, boldly improvised life, he also ponders the enigmas of Sylvia Plath and Paris Hilton and shrewdly reports on the murder trial of a mad-genius computer programmer, Hans Reiser. With astute insights into anger, despair, drug use, sadomasochism, and the elusiveness of love and justice, Elliott is a poet of pain.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)