After Alcohol: Gender and Sobriety Counterstories in Two Contemporary Novels

Abstract

The innovative narrative structures of two contemporary novels-A. L. Kennedy's Paradise (2004) and Anneliese Mackintosh's So Happy It Hurts (2017)-provide frameworks for understanding the decision to stop drinking alcohol that challenge dominant gendered representations. Paradise is a counterstory to formulaic narratives of recovery and female alcoholism; So Happy It Hurts critiques newer postfeminist self-help narratives about sobriety. The novels show that the negotiation with dominant narratives (characteristic of temperance and recovery literature) and the need to devise more nuanced counterstories continue to shape contemporary writing about sobriety, even though the dominant narratives themselves have changed over time.This article examines two contemporary British novels that focus on female characters' attempts to stop drinking alcohol: A. L. Kennedy's Paradise (2004) and Anneliese Mackintosh's So Happy It Hurts (2017). I argue that both novels can be understood as what Abigail Gosselin, in the context of memoirs about drug use, has termed "counterstories"-that