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Its the tormented confession of a doomed romantic.
His narrator undergoes a similar descent.
And unlike most narratives of addiction and derangement, theres no coda of conversion and sobriety.
Tyrants editors then passed on the manuscript thats becomeCherryto Knopf.
He passes out and she puts ice in his underwear because shes afraid hes overdosed.
We had said, Well get a dog and we wont be dope fiends anymore.
So we got the dog.
And we stayed dope fiends.
And now we are dope fiends with a dog.
Cherryis entirely free of the sentimentality of the pet owner.
Really its all very civilized.
Its like a quiet joke that youve shared with them.
The risk you run is that sometimes people think youre a crazy pussy.
And she goes home and tells the kids there isnt going to be any Christmas.
The narrator wasnt fated by class to become a soldier, a junkie, or a bank robber.
His parents are middle class, undivorced, and supportive if not strict.
Similarly, the narrators heroin addiction isnt a state of being with one particular trigger.
We think, this exposure must be what did it.
Theres less an arc or a downward spiral than a very gradual sinking.
Hes let down by VA therapists and distances himself from his family.
When he reunites with his ex-wife, she already has an opioid habit.
A cash shortage, a bad deal, or an absentee dealer can leave them sick for days.
They go back to school so that they can use a combination of G.I.
Bill money and surplus federal student loans to buy drugs.
They take to growing marijuana in their basement.
When the narrator starts robbing banks its out of total desperation for money and the heroin it buys.
He tends to the casualties of his fellow soldiers and of civilians.
The narrator is immune to patriotic cant, an attribute that alienates him from other soldiers.
Inside the wire, the Americans play poker, watch pornography andFaces of Death, and chain-smoke.
A pair of soldiers down the hall make videos of mice dying by various cruel methods.
One of their wives informs him that shes started working as a stripper and cheating on him.
She told him all this shit in more detail than youd have expected she would.
The only humor inCherryis black, and there are no silver linings, no false rays of hope.
Emily is sweet, smart, and sexually generous but also elusive and unfaithful.
But deficiencies of characterization dont mar this novel.
The word for it is dehumanization.
