You Left Early: A True Story of Love and Alcohol
Louisa Young first met Robert Lockhart when they were 17. Their stop-start romance lasted decades, in which time he became a celebrated composer and she, an acclaimed novelist. Always snapping at their heels was Robert’s alcoholism, a helpless, ferocious dependency that affected his personality before crippling and finally, despite five years of hard-won sobriety, killing him.
There are a million love stories, and a million stories of addiction. This one is truly transcendent. It is at once a compelling portrait of a unique and charismatic man; a bittersweet reflection on an all-consuming love affair; and a completely honest and incredibly affecting guide to how the partner of an alcoholic can possibly survive when the disease rips both their lives apart. This is a hugely important book – raw and unflinching but also uplifting and elegiac, it should be essential reading for anybody who’s ever lost someone they loved.
Read an interview with Louisa Young here
Spectacular. I can’t stop thinking about it. Louisa Young is a beautiful, beautiful writer and there is great courage and love in the way she addresses her subject. It’s the portrait of a man and his times and his illness told with love but also with an unflinching honesty that feels like a great gift to the reader.
Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of The Last Act of Love
I’m still fucking crying
Philippa Perry
The most riveting, heartbreaking book I’ve ever read about addiction, but above all about the nature of love. Already one of my books of the year
Linda Grant
If the greatest act of devotion is to conjure the dead beloved in all their vivid, imperfect, mesmerising humanity, then Louisa Young’s book is a memorial to equal the Taj Mahal. Anyone who has ever loved an alcoholic (be that a partner, parent, friend or relative) will find that the author’s insights and breathtaking honesty will salve their wounds, as well as help them better understand the most devastating of addictions
Rowan Pelling
Louisa Young’s memoir of her long, bruising love for musical genius Robert Lockhart is as honest as the morning after and the best account of loving against all sense since Penelope Mortimer’s The Pumpkin Eater
Patrick Gale
I am upset, astonished, compelled, grateful. The sheer work of loving comes through, the understanding that it took. The toll. And yet she continues to spread the understanding. Quite brilliant
Suzanne Moore
Oh my God, it’s so beautiful, and heartbreaking, and true
Sam Baker, The Pool
