New York writer Cat Marnell doesn’t believe in beating around the bush. At one point in her jaw-dropping new book, How To Murder Your Life she recounts emailing her boss to tell her she won’t be in: “Ugh, I did heroin last night and now I’m sick. Throwing up. Sooo sorry,” it reads. Funnily enough, HR weren’t massively impressed...
Marnell, 34, is a notorious figure in Manhattan’s media scene; the privileged, promising magazine beauty editor who nurtured a drug problem so monstrous it’d make Keith Richards blush - as anyone who remembers her controversial Amphetamine Logic column for Vice will recall. As Marnell puts it: “My addiction was a wrecking ball in my life. It knocked down everything that my ambition built.”
A compulsive over-sharer, her memoir chronicles not just her drug addiction, but her bulimia, self-mutilation, upsetting sexual experiences, abortions and family fallouts. It’s harrowing and peppered with breath-taking selfishness, but Marnell’s effervescent, wry writing style is totally compelling: she notes of one rehab stint, “I’ve had tanning bed experiences that were more transformative”. In a world obsessed with Insta-perfection and glossy self-branding, it seems revolutionary to write something so raw and unfiltered. You don’t come away from this liking Cat Marnell very much, but you can’t help but admire her straight-talking chutzpah.
How To Murder Your Life by Cat Marnell is published today. Order it from Amazon
