Overdose: The Adderall Diaries is like a bad trip

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Overdose: The Adderall Diaries is like a bad trip

POSTED: Monday, August 31, 2009, 7:00 PM

Filed Under: Arts Books

Graywolf, 244 pp., $22, September

A quick glance at Stephen Elliott's Adderall Diaries would give the appearance of an intriguing modern murder mystery. The cover sleeve, outlining the premise of the book, tells of Elliott's investigation into the 2007 trial of Hans Reiser, a computer programmer accused of murdering his estranged wife, Nina. While Reiser awaits his trial, his best friend, for whom his wife left him, admits to committing eight unrelated murders.' In the meantime, Elliott is suffering from writer's block and strung out on Adderall, a drug used to treat ADHD and frequently abused by students and workaholics. When Elliott realizes he shares mutual acquaintances with Reiser's friend, Sean Sturgeon, he quickly contacts him and delves into the bizarre mystery of Nina Reiser's death.

The premise of the book is exciting ' a murder mystery as written through the memoir of an unrelated man. Elliott approaches the book with a clear idea of what he wants. He's going to examine Reiser and Sturgeon and break apart the red herrings in the case (like Sturgeon's outlandish murder confession), all while examining his own troubled life and making comparisons between the two. But the result, much like Elliott's life, is more jumbled mess than brilliant expos'.

Throughout the book, Elliott feels unfocused on anything besides how miserable his life is.' The story begins with Elliott's childhood, setting the stage for turmoil with a tale about his lying, seemingly psychotic father.' From there, the author jumps from mini-story to mini-story, telling about his troubled youth, his drug addictions, his self-destructive love life and lack of inspiration to write, all while occasionally throwing in something about Reiser's trial.' By the time you actually get to the play-by-play description of the trial, you feel like Elliott's dragged you on a bad acid trip while watching his home movies.

By the end of the book I was happy to just take the trial's conclusion and never look back. There was closure for both Reiser and Elliott, but it should have come much sooner. Despite its short length, the author crams as much in as humanly possible: the trial, the background of Reiser and Sturgeon, his own stories and random pop culture references.' Elliot would have done better to condense or separate his multiple issues from that of the murder.' He stabs at various attempts to parallel the two, but the similarities fail to really tie the book together.

bill

Posted 2009-10-03 17:01:11

that's what you get when you mix depression and drugs

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Posted by morgandavis" @ 7:00 PM Permalink | Post a comment

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