At once devastating and inspiring, Note Found in a Bottle offers a startlingly intimate portrait of the alcoholic's life -- and of the corageous journey to recovery.

Amazon.com Review
"My grandmother Cheever taught me how to embroider, how to say the Lord's Prayer, and how to make a perfect dry martini."

Alcoholism seems to have been a family tradition among the Cheevers. The posthumous publication of pater John Cheever's journals revealed both his fondness for the bottle and his bisexuality; daughter Susan has gone her father one better, publishing a memoir of promiscuity and drunkenness while still alive. In Note in a Bottle, she leaves little to the imagination as she chronicles her career, her many sexual escapades and, of course, her drinking. A typical passage goes something like this:

Warren knows San Francisco so well it's like being in his own house to be there with him. He took me to a bar with wooden booths. We ate delicious chowder and drank white wine. He drank vodka and grapefruit; it was lunchtime but I could see he had just gotten up. I wondered who he had been in bed with. I drank more white wine.... "I still love you," he said, and he kissed me. I was late for dinner with Calvin.

Alcoholism is invisible   November 23, 2007

Annoying memoir of drinking   April 29, 2005

Post - it in a Bottle   February 27, 2004

Though I enjoyed this book, it was more like an after-school special on the dangers of alcohol (you will forget things, have big fights, and sleep with many men) than an illustration of alcoholism or even the life of Susan Cheever. She admits some things, such as God, and apparently her feelings about her father, are "too private" to explain. Perhaps so, but then why write a memoir?


Misleading title   June 6, 2000
  7 out of 17 found this review helpful

In reviewing a book, one must have a basis from which to start. In considering Cheever's book, I cannot fathom where to start a conclusive review because the entire title of the novel is completely misleading. My intent in reading this autobiography was to learn more about an alcoholic firsthand, in her own words. Unfortunately, there was very little substantial material written about alcoholism, its effects, repercussions, etc. In fact, had that title been different I would have probably enjoyed this bland book about a woman's life tinged with alcohol, among many other things which were given just as much attention in the book. Therefor I find it useless to judge this book because it is based on so many vacant concepts.


Just plain bad   June 3, 2000
  16 out of 19 found this review helpful

The autobiographical drinking story has been done many times before, so the subject matter here is nothing new.

What's so striking different about this book is that there is almost no self-reflection. It's just a compilation of what Susan Cheever drank, the places Susan Cheever drank, the men Susan Cheeer screwed while she was drunk. We'd get much the same result of Susan had gone to Kitty Kelley and asked "Will you write a shallow, vapid account of my life?"

Note Found In a Bottle is self-absored and boringly so. I imagine what keeps Susan awake at night is that most people have found this account of her drinking years Not Very Interesting. She earnestly wants the reader to believe her life was glamourous, but in fact it's just an average drunk story.

I guess there are worse ways to spend (money) than to throw it away on this book....but not many.