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Years back, well before the James Frey debacle, Lindsay Lohan declared that her favorite book was A Million Little Pieces, which made me cringe. I believed that anyone who adored this macho, denial-promoting, chest pumping creation was either a) In the throes of glorifying his or her own addictions, or b) gullible. In light of Lindsay’s recent woes, I created a very non-Frey-like reading list that, I believe, will both help Lindsay and, if need be, kill time while she’s in jail.
1. This Vacant Paradise by Victoria Patterson
Lindsay, you need novels that celebrate female antiheroes, and I humbly offer mine, with the belief that you will relate to its heroine. Defying society’s expectations and her family, Esther Wilson takes the law into her own hands. She takes other things into her own hands as well, things that don’t belong to her, but that make her feel as if she’s “fine tuning the inequities of the universe.” Beautiful and tragic, Esther does find solace and relief, not through stealing, but through deeper, larger, and more profound internal awakenings; and you, dear Lindsay, I’m rooting for you.
2. The Spirituality of Imperfection by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham
Lindsay, you’re not alone. Like the child’s game of “Hit the Gopher with the Shovel,” you knock one addiction down, and before you know it—boom! —out pops another. Instinctively, we think, Get it, get it, and kill it! But instead of fighting (or denying), The Spirituality of Imperfection instructs us to live and breathe in those gaps of fallibility, and to embrace them as our best path to spirituality.
3. Drop the Rock by Todd W., Bill P., and Sara S.
During a particularly worrisome chapter in my somewhat worrisome life (let’s not get into it here, Lindsay), a well-intentioned woman handed me her card, with her name and phone number underneath the inscription: Let Go of the Big One. “What does that even mean?” I asked (and then I scowled, no doubt). She told me a story about a woman with a big stone around her neck, drowning, with a boat full of people nearby yelling, “Drop the rock! Drop the rock!” Finally, the woman flung the rock aside, swam, and climbed aboard the boat, only to see another woman flailing in the water, so that soon she found herself yelling with the others, “Drop the rock! Drop it!” With over 100,000 copies sold, Drop the Rock is essential for those in recovery. Lindsey, to be honest, I’m still not sure how to “let go of the big one,” but, like the well-intentioned woman’s silly story, Drop the Rock helps, and I have no idea why or how.
4. The Los Angeles Diaries and This River by James Brown
Lindsay, lest you fall prey to a Frey-like glorification again, The Los Angeles Diaries and its postscript, This River by James Brown will surely set you straight. James Brown’s memoirs chronicle the chaos of his life, including the suicides of his alcoholic and drug addicted siblings, and his own battles with addiction. Of This River, Tim O’Brien writes, “A beautifully crafted and intensely moving book. Without artifice or pretension—without false moves of any sort—James Brown goes after the biggest literary game: death, love, children, degeneration, hopelessness, hope.”
5. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Like many of us, Raskolnikov, the hero of Dostoevsky’s novel, struggles with issues of entitlement. Lindsay, trust me on this one: Not only will you be reading one of the classics, but this profound meditation on guilt and retribution will make your problems seem minimal.
Victoria Patterson is the author of the novel This Vacant Paradise. Drift, her collection of interlinked short stories, was a finalist for the California Book Award and the 2009 Story Prize. The San Francisco Chronicle selected Drift as one of the best books of 2009. Her work has appeared in various publications and journals, including the Los Angeles Times, Alaska Quarterly Review, and the Southern Review. She lives with her family in Southern California and teaches through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and as a Visiting Assistant Professor at UC Riverside.
