Review #2 - Long Past Standing

Long Past Standing, by Oran Canfield, Audience: teen-adult

Long Past Standing is a memoir about a young man who is addicted to heroin and the crazy path his life took before his addiction. The chapters alternate telling stories about his childhood and about his addiction and recovery. Throughout most of this book the stories of his childhood: learning to juggle, joining a circus, living in Guatemala and Mexico and many others are the more interesting parts of the story. The chapters dealing with his addiction felt vaguely familiar as if I had read them before, which is partly true: any story about addiction tends to have similarities. Towards the end of the book a shift of interest evolves where the stories of his childhood (by this point his high school years) have less interest as his obvious need to kick heroin for good become more and more important.

Having recently read another memoir about drug addiction and crazy family life it seems this story has been told many times. However this particular one was written well, which does not always happen and was able to inspire continued reading.