A story about when one person gets sober but the others around him do not, nor have much regard for his sobriety. Reading this, I found Monk to be acquiescing to the realities of his lifelong peers and not doing much work on himself to create a new reality for himself. Brand new feathers on the same old bird.

Deagler has written one heck of a novel.
As the title suggests, this book is about one young man who gets sober and deals with all that entails.

His parents kick him out of their home when he is newly sober. He relies on the kindness of his friends as he couch surfs with them all. He deals with all of the issues confronting the newly sober in a world that they are navigating for the first time.

He encounters former friends that he drank with, former classmates and others that he knew when he was drunk. He finds sobriety and the accompanying adulthood tough roads to ho.

This book is a good look at what is a really hard time for the newly sober. I have been sober decades and found this book true to form in the issues - and the young man himself.

Thank you to Astra House and NetGalley for this ARC of Michael Deagler's 'Early Sobrieties.'

We follow Dennis Monk as he spends his first year of sobriety couch-surfing with friends (new and old) and acquaintances all over South Philadelphia after a decade or more of wanton drunkenness.

I wouldn't say that this is an overly original narrative or theme but I can say it's highly enjoyable due to the warmth and humor that the author injects into his characters and story and also for the way in which he makes South Philly and its myriad and changing neighborhoods into one of the indelible characters in the novel.

Monk - a son of a blue collar Bucks County family - is a recovering alcoholic who eschews the 12 steps and figures that his getting sober is reward enough for the people he might've harmed along the way. He starts off in the novel self-righteously proclaiming his sobriety to all and sundry but comes to loathe having to explain himself.

It's an interesting structure, while there are characters who have a thread throughout the book we engage pretty deeply with each new housemate for a while and then, all of a sudden, he's in a new spot with a new housemate and the previous one and the reason for their jettisoning not discussed and we never hear from them again in most cases. I eventually liked it because I think it reflect the disjointed nature and lack of forethought to his meanderings across South Philly for that year.

Monk is a great character - very human and with all the nuances and burgeoning self-awareness you'd hope to see - and all of the consistent and fleeting characters that appear in the book are also very enjoyable - from the blue collar no-nonsense mailman father to sex club owning neighbor we meet briefly towards the end.

I'm not sure what the approach would be but I would love to know more about what happens next for Monk.

This book is as fascinating as it is monotonous. It’s truly just plodding along in someone’s first year of sobriety, which I imagine can be quite boring compared to their lives before. This book for me was a slow delight and a chance to get to know a man named Dennis, a man working hard to get his life back. A refreshing change of pace after other books I’ve read recently.

Thank you NetGalley and Astra House (maybe my new favorite indie) for the ARC!

I don't normally love coming-of-age stories about dysfunctional young men (did we not grow up with so many of them), but this book reeled me in with one of the best opening lines I've read all year: "Like all mailmen, my father hated James Farley, William Kendall, and Herodotus." It's just out of nowhere--I know nothing about mailmen, this guy's father, or any of these three characters/historical figures, but now I want to! This is a great book about the often simultaneous challenge of adapting to one's adult self and kicking a brutal addiction (while trying to build a career as a journalist). Places and spaces are described stunningly, from kitchens to landscapes, but even more so the fight to stay alive when the world assumes you have your whole life ahead of you. And, as our protagonist adds about wrestling away one's life from the jaws of death..."Then what?" Looking forward to much much more from Michael Deagler!

Gah, I loved this book so much. I rarely enjoy collections of linked short stories, which I would consider this to be, but Deagler's character drew me into the mess of his world. This is a book that made me think about young life, sobriety, and Philadelphia differently. My favorite moments came in the interactions between people who he thought he knew and people who thought they knew him and the disconnects that took place. I'll be thinking about his carpet removal of the old house for a long time, and the way it idolized work (in a way not dissimilar to the book's commentary on the post office). All this to say, read it. This book is funny and true and great.

Thank you so much for this arc. It really means a lot to me because I am in recovery. This book really pulled at my heart strings and brought back memories and feelings from when I was getting sober.

I love how every chapter felt like a short story. Dennis is one of the most frustrating but lovable characters I have ever read. This is an easy read and makes you root for everyone who has ever had an addiction.

Dennis Monk returns to Philadelphia at the beginning of Michael Deagler’s EARLY SOBRIETIES, newly sober. He spends his days horny and spottily-employed and couch surfing in the company of people from his past. People who once tied him to his addiction like it was his only identity, do the same at first to his sobriety, as he struggles to recalibrate his life into something more. For Monk, staying sober day-to-day is hard enough, leaving seemingly no space to even imagine what a future beyond that holds. Each day, a new temptation: the friend that orders booze while he sips on water, the bottle of gin thrust in his hands while an acquaintance flees from a crime scene, the drunk he helps even as their behavior brings out every insecurity he has about his blackout past. A past that includes sins and bad behavior he isn’t sure how to atone for, a death of a friend whose ghost he can’t seem to leave behind. There is a certain part of Monk that can’t seem to work out whether his addiction inherently means there is something bad inside of him, whether taking away the drink will leave behind a violence rotting in his soul. “Addition and sobriety are different cities,” a friend tells him, and it seems this mirrors his experience of returning to Philadelphia as well, as he rediscovers a changing and gentrifying city and people he thought he once thought he knew inside of it.

EARLY SOBRIETIES can be described as a series of connected chronological encounters. I like how time is loose here; there is a leisure to it, and when I say “leisure” I mean in an anti-capitalist way, because while Monk is rebuilding the small components of his life he is also rejecting what one character calls tough love, as in pull-yourself-together-and-get-a-real-job-like-a-real-adult. EARLY SOBRIETIES really shows us that the precarity of addiction doesn’t always allow for this. It is not easy to like Monk at times; his judgment of himself sometimes reflects as judgement on others, but you can’t help but root for him, because he is trying, trying with the people around him, fighting the individuality of addiction, of sobriety, of disability. Trying towards the possibility of a future stretching out before him each day he remains alive.

Thank you again Astra House for sending me this gifted book! EARLY SOBRIETIES is out May 7.

This one was a slow exploration of a first year in sobriety. A lot of this novel was more vibes driven as Dennis interacts with various people to see where he fits in life. Deagler is definitely a talented writer and I thought he constructed a plausible story with a realistic scenario. Deagler’s command of language was also impressive. I couldn’t always relate to Dennis but there might be people that can relate to him more.

Thank you Astra House for the ARC of this one.

This is the story of Dennis Monk. Monk has quite drinking and is drifting around his home town of Philadelphia, sleeping on friends and relatives couches, washing dishes to pay for his meagre expenses and trying to process where he is in life, and maybe work out where he is going. The structure of the novel is novel - each chapter starts with a new residence, but the previous chapters do not actively end with the end of each tenancy.
This was a book that made me (is still making me) think. Monk and his friends are neither likeable nor unlikable, although one of the key features of the book (for me) is that he always has somewhere to go. Ultimately this is a book about growing up, not so much a coming of age novel and a book about the current age. I'm glad I read this thoughtful, occasionally frustrating book.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-Arc in exchange for an honest review.

This book is deep, heartfelt and even a little funny. The book follows 26- year-old Dennis Monk’s itinerant first year of sobriety. He is forced to leave his parents’ house where he was staying and ends back in the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia. He spends his time couch surfing with friends and bouncing around between jobs, trying to find his place in the world without alcohol. The story unfolds in a realistically unpredictable way that reminds you of the complexities of being human. Each of the characters are painted in a believable manner that forces you into the mind of Monk but also makes you pause to reflect on the complicated nature of other humans. The book reminds you of what it’s like to struggle to find yourself in a world that appears to have changed from the one you were promised as a kid. It forces you to see the world from multiple sides and slows down the side of you that wants to judge things that are different. This book is a simple character driven novel that delivers an amazing story with an amazing cast of characters.

When the novel opens, 26 year old Dennis Monk is back living in his parents’ house in Buck’s County, Pennsylvania. Monk sheepishly observes that when his father was 26, he had been with the post office for four years and had a wife and an apartment. Even Monk’s younger brother, Owen, a recent college graduate, has plans: he is off to San Francisco with a buddy to “get tech jobs,” although he comes to realize that you “can’t show up in Silicon Valley and get a job off the street” so he decides to move to New York and get a finance job and, later, plans to drive to Corpus Christie and find a job on an oil rig.

Monk is a recovering alcoholic. He totaled a car at twenty-one, lost his first job at twenty-two, and booze killed his best friend at twenty-three. After eight years of “ceaseless boozing,” he is now 7 months sober. After his skeptical parents kick him out of their home when he fails to secure employment, the novel follows Monk as he shares housing with old friends, many of whom seem to have lives more precarious then Monk’s, takes on a series of odd jobs, and visits the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of his youth.

What makes the novel special is Monk’s wry insights. When he describes Marc Dogana, a guy with whom he had spent a lot of time drinking and with whom Monk is couch surfing, he says, Dogman was an accountant in the Philadelphia office of one of the country’s largest banks. Boring job with a modest salary, “but the Dogman presented himself like a Wall Street bond trader in 1987 — a figure of surplus and insouciance.” Deagler eschews the typical alcoholic redemption arc and, instead, focuses on how Monk handles his fragile sobriety in a novel that is laugh out loud funny. Thank you Astra House and Net Galley for an advance copy of this captivating novel that introduces readers to the unforgettable Monk.

Picture this: You’re a former blackout drunk navigating your first booze-free summer back in Philly. No, it’s not the setup for a sitcom, it’s Michael Deagler’s pitch-perfect debut, Early Sobrieties.

This book isn’t just about staying dry; it's a deep dive into trying to glue back a life with sobriety superglue. Think of it as a quarter-life crisis with a twist—hold the vodka.

Deagler serves up a slice of life that’s equal parts hilarious and heart-wrenching. Our protagonist, Dennis, isn’t just trying to avoid the bottle—he’s wrestling with who he is without it. And let me tell you, his inner landscape has more ups and downs than a rollercoaster at Six Flags.

The writing? Sharp as a tack dipped in witty sauce. Every page simmers with the kind of humor that only comes when life's been both a mess and a half.

So, if you're in the mood for a tale that’s a little raw, a tad gritty, and a whole lot insightful, give Early Sobrieties a go. It’s like a sobering slap followed by a comforting hug.

I requested this e-galley because of the comparison to Denis Johnson, which, in reading the novel now, doesn't feel totally correct, but what I read was just as profound. A poignant novel on sobriety, and change vs stuckness. There's a briskness to the prose that I enjoyed, too.

I'll be thinking about this novel for a while.

Also, Astra House has been publishing some of the most exciting fiction these past few years??? I will read anything they publish at this point.

Thank you for the e-galley!

I am sober. I’m not as early in my sobriety as Dennis Monk, the main character in Michael Deagler’s Early Sobrieties, but I can definitely relate to many of the experiences Dennis encounters in his first year of sobriety. After his parents ask him and his brother to move out the novel follows Dennis as he moves from couch to couch in Philadelphia, making sobriety his sole focus.

The structure of the book feels a bit like short stories; they are firmly connected through Dennis and a few recurring characters, but each chapter places Dennis in different situations and settings as he inches closer to the one year sober mark. Normally I might be put off by this style but it brilliantly fed into the unmoored feeling of being newly sober. The feeling of separating yourself from the thing you have centered your life around (in this case alcohol) is so well represented by Monk’s movement from place to place, never settling anywhere, just drifting around trying to find somewhere to anchor. At the same time, it creates a sense that a steady anchor isn’t necessary because really all that matters is the present.

I sometimes talk about books that have the ability to evoke not only thoughts but feelings and this one does both. Undoubtedly some of the feeling for me comes from a personal connection to the story, but I’m sure some of it is more universal. The depths of emotion Deagler pens faithfully depict the highs and lows of life, which is the gift many get when they decide to stop using their substance of choice and feel their feelings. It’s definitely been that way for me.

I appreciate that this depicts a journey to sobriety outside of the 12 steps which is often centered in recovery stories. It reinforces the fact that journeys to sobriety are as individual and different as the people taking them and regardless of the path there are still shared threads of common experience. It also depicts the reality that sober people still have to figure out how to exist in the world; just because a person changes doesn’t mean the environment they exist in has.

For me this is a book about living. Not living the grand lives we may have dreamed of as a kid but the lives that reality gives us and finding peace in just one day. One of my favorite passages out of the Alcoholics Anonymous “Big Book” has to do with acceptance being the key to problems. And I loved walking along with Monk as he moved toward acceptance and settled into the new life he had been given through sobriety. Whether you are an addict or not there is something beautiful to be found in these pages. I would definitely recommend this one.

Thank you Astra House Books and Netgalley for the gifted ARC.

So glad I cam across this debut; it is full of clear, evocative, and tender writing. Writing is tight and attentive to feeling which really creates a visceral experience of time and space. The author has a convincing grasp of reality and convention that creates a meaningful and nostalgic narrative. Absolutely nailed it as a modern day Jesus' Son.

This book was outside my normal genres but when I read the synopsis I knew I needed to read it. As someone who spent a lot of time partying in college and is now sober but still works in bars - this one packed a punch.

I typically struggle with books that are character driven and lack plot, but Early Sobrieties follows Dennis Monk through a series of stories and living situations as he navigates being a recovering alcoholic. Monk finds himself in a bunch of crazy scenarios, and shows the reader what it’s like to have life happen to them, vs. actually living. I loved reading from his perspective - an Irish-Catholic Philadelphian with a love for the city and a mild disdain for the gentrification around him.

The writing in this book was amazing and I can’t wait to check out more from the author. While navigating such a serious topic, he still manages to find the humor in situations and I laughed out loud a couple of times. Check this one out if you have ever struggled with addiction, have family that has, or want to understand the mind of someone in recovery!

**Thank you to NetGalley and Astra House Books for the eARC of this title. Quotes below may be changed in final publication.**

Quotes:

“How can you ever change if every mistake and humiliation of your life is folklore for those who witnessed it?”

“An anecdote in the mouths of those whose fate sat on the stool next to you while you were young and brutal and gullible and scared?”

“I was sensible. I’d stuck to alcohol, a substance so wholesome they served it in church.”

This is an interesting exploration of sobriety - one that highlights nuance and the uncertainty. As Dennis Monk moves through the novel, we see him trying to build a life at the age of 27 (i.e. this is a great saturn return novel lol) which is counter to everything he has previously known and experienced.

Early Sobrieties was a really interesting and engaging read. I appreciated the character exploration and would read more from Deagler.