Gone to the Crazies: A Memoir

by Alison Weaver

Book Overview

Alison Weaver's privileged upbringing hid the darker undertones of her childhood until her parents shipped her away, at fifteen, to the cultish Cascade School, warping her perception of reality. Upon graduation, set adrift in New York's East Village in the 1990s, her life began a downward spiral marked by needles and late-night parties. Stumbling into free fall and mingling with fears of death, she was forced to face her darkness. Here is Weaver's thoughtful exploration of what it means to fight for identity and equilibrium.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061374016
• ISBN13: 9780061374012
• Release Date: July 2008
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A great pleasure to read...

A true tale of survival written with gritty eloquence and heartbreaking honesty. Weaver is a gifted writer and wise beyond her years. This book may not have a clear resolution but the fact that she healed enough to write such a brutally frank memoir is proof enough of her strength and recovery.

A poignant and compelling memoir!

This was a fantastic memoir, and a daring statement on addiction and recovery. I found it very insightful, brutally honest and painfully devastating, though in the end a powerful testament to a battle won.

Accurate and True

I also attended Cascade School and I was there with Alison Weaver. And contrary to the comments posted by "crazyhousewife" (a name you might want to re-think), Alison's account of the school is actually accurate and nothing but true. Cascade caused severe damage to many on its students that still to this day haunt their lives, not to mention reoccuring sexual abuse against students disguised as affection. The end result of any cult is to ultimately make its believers committed to the ideology and I guess Casacade worked on Crazy Housewife. And for the record, Weaver never calls Cascade an outright cult, she simply says it has the colors of one, and it does. I think it's quite clear Alison has a life, she's published a book, which by the way had a full review in The New York Times, started a journal for charity and is an accomplished writer. What have you done?

Heart Wrenching

What a page-turner! Weaver is a gifted writer and describes her descent into addiction with such brutal honesty. A truly heart-wrenching story. --Jason Leopold, author of News Junkie.

Compelling read

Both eerie and compelling GONE TO THE CRAZIES follows a young woman's rocky road to self-redemption. Weaver's sparse and perfectly chiseled prose is reminiscent of Sylvia Plath's BELL JAR, and separates this book from the river of other memoirs. The narrator's shockingly honest voice makes for a hard read, but you will be grateful for it in the end.