Mayhem

July 15, 2017
The piercing, fragmented story of how the author watched the horrific toll drug addiction took on her brother and his wife.Granta publisher Rausing's (Everything Is Wonderful: Memories of a Collective Farm in Estonia, 2014, etc.) brother Hans first became addicted to heroin in his late teens. Haunted by his history of drug abuse, the author chronicles Hans' downfall while probing patterns in her family that made them all complicit in this tragedy. Born to wealth, Hans spent his young adulthood in and out of rehabilitation programs that, along with the other "props" of a privileged life--nannies, staff, and "sordid doctors"--could allow addicts to go on "in a twilight existence...for years." He met his future wife, Eva, while both were recovering from drug relapses. When they married in 1992, they seemed determined to not let their respective pasts impact their future together: "They [went] to 12-step meetings...and they gave money to addiction charities." But eight years into their marriage, both Hans and Eva stopped going to their meetings, "let go of solidarity with other addicts," and began taking drugs. In the mid-2000s, still unaware of the extent of Hans' resurgent addiction, Rausing and her family admonished Eva to seek help. However, in retrospect, the author saw that Eva "[no longer] believed in rehab" and still thought of herself as immune from total self-destruction. By 2007 and under court order, Hans and Eva's children had gone to live with Rausing; by 2012, "all communications ceased." Not long afterward, Eva was found dead of an overdose, and police arrested a dazed Hans on suspicion of murder. The narrative resonates because Rausing, a private person, shares intimate memories and expresses her sentiments about events that the media sensationalized. As she understands it, addiction is not only a family disease, but also an "endlessly revolving merry-go-round" that keeps addicts and family members trapped in alternating victim/victimizer roles of "guards and hostages." A stylish and devastatingly lucid memoir.

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August 14, 2017
Granta magazine publisher Rausing (Everything Is Wonderful: Memories of a Collective Farm in Estonia and History, Memory, and Identity in Post-Soviet Estonia) recounts the lives of her brother Hans and her sister-in-law Eva, who were addicted to drugs, in this intimate and compassionate memoir. Rausing is the granddaughter of the founder of Swedish company Tetra Pak, a food-packaging manufacturer. Tetra Pak brought her family great wealth and fame. Her brother Hans, the family heir to Tetra Pak, and his wife Eva cycled in and out of rehabs, relapsing after several years of sobriety. In 2012 Eva’s body was found decomposing in her and Hans’s bedroom. Rausing explores this tragedy with grace, humility, and razor-sharp insight. Throughout, she attempts to better understand the fierce compulsions of addiction. After Eva’s death, Rausing’s family was the subject of relentless Swedish tabloid coverage. Rausing concludes, “ implies guilt, which is appropriate in this context, since there is no addict story that doesn’t revolve around guilt, shame and judgment.” Her writing is rich with humble wisdom. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency.

August 1, 2017
In our era of epidemic opioid addiction, statistics, trends, and demographics may tell the big story. But in her memoir, social anthropologist and Granta editor Rausing renders a close-up tale. Pushing aside the veil of family privacy, Rausing discloses and dissects the tormenting details of her family's unhappy maelstrom. Her brother, Hans, first met his bride-to-be, Eva, in rehab; in fact, Eva had been recruited to convince Hans to remain in treatment. They become sober together; their friendship blossoms into love; and for eight years, they live and thrive in sobriety. Then a small slip ignites a downward spiral that over the following years disrupts lives, alienates family, and ends in sorrow. Unrelenting in detail, Rausing's story relates the impact her brother and sister-in-law's struggles have on Rausing herself, as she wrestles to understand her own role and responsibility to them. Along the way, Rausing reflects on contemporary theories of addiction and recovery to which her family turns for aid but that are found wanting in the face of a tragic reality.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)