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    The Gilded Razor: A Memoir
    The Gilded Razor: A Memoir
    The Gilded Razor: A Memoir
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Gilded Razor: A Memoir

    Written by Sam Lansky

    Narrated by Cole Ferguson

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Sharply funny and compulsively readable, The Gilded Razor is a “powerful addition to the literature of active addiction and recovery” (New York Times bestselling author Bill Clegg) from debut author Sam Lansky.

    The Gilded Razor is the true story of a double life that New York Times bestselling author George Hodgman called “virtuosic.” By the age of seventeen, Sam Lansky was an all-star student with Ivy League aspirations in his final year at an elite New York City prep school. But a nasty addiction to prescription pills spiraled rapidly out of control, compounded by a string of reckless affairs with older men, leaving his bright future in jeopardy. After a terrifying overdose, he tried to straighten out. Yet as he journeyed from the glittering streets of Manhattan, to a wilderness boot camp in Utah, to a psych ward in New Orleans, he only found more opportunities to create chaos—until finally, he began to face himself.

    In the vein of Elizabeth Wurtzel and Augusten Burroughs, Lansky scrapes away at his own life as a young addict and exposes profoundly universal anxieties. Told with remarkable sensitivity, biting humor, and unrelenting self-awareness, The Gilded Razor is a coming-of-age story of searing honesty and lyricism and “one of the best portraits about the implacable power of addiction” (Susan Cheever, bestselling author of Drinking in America).

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJan 12, 2016
    ISBN9781511365185
    The Gilded Razor: A Memoir
    Author

    Sam Lansky

    Sam Lansky is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir The Gilded Razor and the West Coast editor at Time magazine. He’s written for New York magazine, The Atlantic, Esquire and Out. He lives in Los Angeles, California.samlansky.com

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    Reviews for The Gilded Razor

    4/5

    32 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This one should perhaps come with a trigger warning however this was an amazing book about the hells of addictions and recovery! This was one of those books that I could not put down and finished in two days. I appreciated how descriptive this book was and you could visualize most things occurring. I could also feel oh so many of the emotions played on in this story.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Visceral, real, and heartbreaking. Felt like such an honest self reflection from the author about their young self. I picked it because I listen to a lot of quit lit, and this was a lot more "struggle" and "temptation" than "release." I agree with another reviewer that said trigger warning might be helpful here.
    • 1/5
      A trite monotonous memoir. Sex, drugs, alcohol; then drugs, sex and more alcohol, then drugs alcohol and sex. He writes well but not worth reading.
    • 4/5
      A well-written memoir of an addict who happens to be gay. Offspring of a broken home, Sam is a very intelligent young man who makes some poor choices. He relates a dissolute period in his life with a sort of panache and an attitude that takes the edge off of some of the darker aspects of his addiction. I surprisingly enjoyed the book probably because I appreciate good writing and the sex scenes were a bonus.
    • 5/5
      I find myself at a loss for words after finishing this intense read, and that doesn't happen often.Certainly not a memoir for the feint of heart, Lansky does not shy away from any detail of his lurid life under a horrible drug addiction. Yet his candid openness is what makes this such a profound and almost poetic read. How can you walk away from such an insane lifestyle such as his and not be completely open about it? To do so would certainly diminish his own experiences.I am sure reliving those years in such detail was extremely hard. It was certainly difficult to read at times and uncomfortable.Lansky is an amazing writer, and I can't recall a memoir about addiction told more beautifully than this one. He has just enough clarity to recall his life with a realistic sense of reflection and observation. Yet, I found myself struggling to understand his addiction as much as he was in the moment. I felt in it with him, almost as if he still didn't understand it and we were trying to learn together. That is powerful to me in a way that most memoirs are not. He could have simply told us the details of his experiences and and then mentioned the why's as an afterthought. Instead he took us on the journey with him, which involved not knowing why he was so self destructive, and trying so hard to understand his own behaviors.This was such an intense read and I could not put it down. Often times uncomfortable, and certainly very graphic, but as mentioned before, I don't think there was any other way for him to tell his story. It is an uncomfortable story and a graphic one, and to tell it any other way would have been a lie. This book will stay with me. Very, Very powerful memoir!