Reading Drinking Until Morning, by Justin Grimbol, is like walking on eggshells. Every page, every moment, you are waiting, afraid that if you breathe a little too loudly poor, lost Grimboli will break. The book is dirty, rough, and unapologetic… and yet it is beautiful, and remorseful, and heartbreaking. It can be startling when you find a piece of yourself in one of Grimbol’s characters. Maybe it is in the way he describes his mother’s “elephantiasis of the soul”, or the intelligence in Jesse’s crude humor, but it’s there… somewhere… in the uncomfortable truth that doesn’t bother to hide behind rose-colored glasses.
If Justin Grimbol’s book doesn’t make you uncomfortable, you are reading it wrong. If you don’t want to feel uncomfortable, it’s not your kind of book. If you’ve never been a teenager, or a twenty-something, struggling with identity, purpose, self-image, or sex then you won’t get it. If you’ve never been irrevocably damaged by loss, first love, or co-dependency, you won’t understand.
This book is for anyone who has trudged through the filth of just-past-adolescence and not-quite-adulthood and come out the other side. Or maybe not. Whatever the case, it’s a book I strongly recommend to anyone who has ever experienced true, life-devouring loneliness.
You can support Justin by picking up your own copy of Drinking Until Morning on Amazon.