In a classic tale, there is a hero and a villain. The hero fights, conquers the villain, and lives happily ever after. What happens after the hero’s victory is what Michael Deagler explores in his debut novel Early Sobrieties. What is life like after an alcoholic becomes sober for the first time in their adult life?
Deagler’s hero is Dennis Monk, referred to as just “Monk,” a recently-turned-sober-twenty-six-year-old. The story follows Monk during his first year of sobriety as he tries to find his place in a world without alcohol.
As the novel begins, Monk has been sober for six months—a huge accomplishment considering he has been drunk for most of his adult life. Throughout the book, Monk wanders aimlessly around Philadelphia; his only goal is to remain sober.
Deagler has a unique gift of drawing the reader in and keeping them engaged in a novel with no discernable plot. His style is reminiscent of a friend sitting beside you and telling you their life story. Monk’s adventures around Philadelphia take the reader on a journey past landmarks such as the Philadelphia Art Museum and the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, to seedy bars, gentrified neighborhoods, and an apartment building right below I-95.
We meet Monk at his most vulnerable state. Like a kid waking up to find that they were suddenly transplanted into an adult world, Monk is fully awake and aware of the world around him for the first time in his adult life. The mundane has become a new world that sparkles with its freshness but also stings. Now that his “whiskey bandage” was ripped away, Monk is as “raw as an infant,” exposed to the world. It is in this state—with the freshness of rediscovery surrounding him—that Monk begins his odyssey through Philadelphia.
Monk’s travels around Philadelphia happen in a go-with-the-flow sort of way. He moves from one place to the next, finding people to stay with as he floats through their lives. Monk meets new friends and encounters his old classmates, past drinking buddies, previous girlfriends, and family—an assortment of characters who each have a unique influence on his story.
Throughout his travels in Philadelphia and his adventures along the way, Monk retains an almost childlike sense of hope. His life is wide open, and the possibilities of how his story will turn out are endless. However, he is acutely aware of the time he lost to his alcoholism and the effect that those lost years have on his life. Monk came out of his alcoholic cave to find a world that had moved on. Freshly into his fragile sobriety, his parents waste no time in comparing Monk’s young adult experience and generation to theirs. Having had steady jobs and a family for over four years at Monk’s current age, his parents openly judge and look down upon Monk’s experience and make no show of pretending that the time he lost to alcohol can be taken back; his mother plainly says, in front of him, “It’s too late for Dennis.”
While Monk’s idealism prevents him from agreeing with his mother’s sentiment that he cannot salvage the mess his life has turned into, he is not only acutely aware of his loss of time but jealous of others who do not have the same loss. At a party Monk goes to in his seventh month of sobriety, he becomes jealous of a girl because of her “lived-in life.” Deagler proves to be a master at balancing Monk’s idyllic and hopeful outlook with his pragmatic understanding of his missed time and the real-life difficulties of staying sober and changing one’s life.
Deagler writes about the complexity of life. He brings this reality and depth to Monk’s character. In Monk’s life, as in life itself, nothing is straightforward or as linear as expected. Monk’s expectations and plans for his own life are constantly reshaped throughout the novel—as plans and expectations often are. Early Sobrieties portrays a rarely told story of what it is like to rediscover oneself after years of addiction, and to see what a rediscovered world can hold.
Learn more about Early Sobrieties and purchase a copy here.
Early Sobrieties
Michael Deagler
Astra House
May 7, 2024
263 pages
