The Next Chapter

If you loved Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle, you'll love...

If you loved The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, try Drunk Mom by Jowita Bydlowska.
Jowita Bydlowska's Drunk Mom was published in 2013.

The Glass Castle, a memoir by Jeannette Walls, is a best-selling book about the author's dysfunctional family. Columnist Victor Dwyer says if you liked Walls' memoir, you'll love Drunk Mom by Toronto-based author Jowita Bydlowska. 

"I think Drunk Mom is a great book about a story about someone who is a drunk, a flat out drunk. This isn't an adjective in front of mom; she is a drunk and she is a mom. In the first 11 months of her child's life she relapses into a horrible alcoholism that she had left behind her years before. It's riveting, it's scary, it's sickening at times. It's so wide-eyed. she looks and examines everything. She apologizes for nothing. It's as if she's saying in the book, 'Screw you vodka. This is what you did to me and I am going to out you. I'm going to tell the world what I went through.' People have really pilloried her for writing this and not being more contrite and apologizing. I love that about it. It's a scary book about a family and alcohol and what it did to it."

Victor Dwyer's comments have been edited and condensed.