How to Murder Your Life
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  • Published: 28 May 2018
  • ISBN: 9780091957360
  • Imprint: Ebury Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $28.00

How to Murder Your Life

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Paperback
28 May 2018
Audiobook
2 Feb 2017
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A controversial, brave and revealing insight into the realities of drug addiction, from one of New York’s most remarkable young writers


'I was twenty-six years old and an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America. That’s all that most people knew about me. But beneath the surface, I was full of secrets: I was a drug addict, for one. A pillhead. I was also an alcoholic-in-training who guzzled warm Veuve Clicquot after work alone in my boss’s office with the door closed; a conniving and manipulative uptown doctor-shopper; a salami-and-provolone-puking bulimic who spent a hundred dollars a day on binge foods when things got bad (and they got bad often); a weepy, wobbly, wildly hallucination-prone insomniac; a tweaky self-mutilator; a slutty and self-loathing downtown party girl; and – perhaps most of all – a lonely weirdo. But, you know, I had access to some really fantastic self-tanner.'

By the age of 15, Cat Marnell longed to work in the glamorous world of women's magazines - but was also addicted to the ADHD meds prescribed by her father. Within 10 years she was living it up in New York as a beauty editor at Condé Nast, with a talent for 'doctor-shopping' that secured her a never-ending supply of prescribed amphetamines. Her life had become a twisted merry-go-round of parties and pills at night, while she struggled to hold down her high-profile job during the day.

Witty, magnetic and penetrating - prompting comparisons to Bret Easton Ellis and Charles Bukowski - Cat Marnell reveals essential truths about her generation, brilliantly uncovering the many aspects of being an addict with pin-sharp humour and beguiling style.


'New York's enfant terrible...Her talent has resided in her uncanny ability to write about addiction from the untidy, unsafe, unhappy epicentre of the disease, rather than from some writerly remove.' Telegraph

'I LOVE this book' Catriona Innes, Cosmopolitan Magazine UK
'An unputdownable, brilliantly written rollercoaster' Shappi Khorsandi
'Brilliantly written and harrowing and funny and honest' Louise France, The Times Magazine

'Easily one of the most anticipated memoirs of the year...[Marnell's] got an inimitable style (and oh my god, so many have tried) and a level of talent so high, it's impossible not to be rooting for her.' NYLON
  • Published: 28 May 2018
  • ISBN: 9780091957360
  • Imprint: Ebury Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $28.00
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About the author

Cat Marnell

Cat Marnell is a Condé Nast drop-out and former beauty editor at Lucky and xoJane.com. She wrote the ‘Amphetamine Logic’ column for Vice. How to Murder Your Life is her first book.

portrait photo of Cat Marnell

Praise for How to Murder Your Life

Challenging ... captivating and controversial

The Atlantic Wire

Marnell is arguably the Internet’s most divisive writer ... reading about a drug addict’s life while she’s an active addict, especially in real time, is fascinating and a little bit scary

The Daily Beast

With her divisive mix of ego, honesty, sordidness and humor, Ms. Marnell is becoming the latest online lightning rod

Wall Street Journal

A gifted memoirist ... [She displays] a willingness to tell unflattering truths about herself that reminded me of Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation

New York Times Magazine

Marnell recounts parties and drugs and sex in writing that mirrors the experience of being on drugs – sometimes fizzing ... and, just as often, cold and blunt and brutal

Guardian

A marvel of a book...Through the highs, lows and lols, the self-loathing, self-tan and self-medicating, How to Murder Your Life is possibly the best book ever written by a recovering drug addict about the beauty industry.

i-D (Vice)

Jaw-dropping.

New York Post

If you're captivated by the irresistible trio of beauty, success, and addiction, surrender to Cat Marnell's How to Murder Your Life. The xoJane columnist dishes on her previous wild-child ways, from shoplifting to party hopping to spiritual groveling, to finding a measure of humor and grace.

Elle

[Marnell's] memoir brims with all the intoxicating intrigue of a thriller and yet all the sobering pathos of a gifted writer's true-life journey to recover her former health, happiness, ambitions and identity.

Harper's Bazaar

Fantastically entertaining.

Glamour

The book is as compelling — and as problematic — as her magazine writing: vivid, maddening, heartbreaking, very funny, chaotic and repetitive, as benders are.

New York Times

[Marnell] writes about her life with a candor and self-awareness that is unexpected...I read this book in two wide-eyed sittings, cringing and laughing the whole way through.

BuzzFeed

Marnell is a great storyteller. Funny, with the clever hustler’s knack for an energetically spun tall tale, she has an upbeat tone that hardly falters, even when she recounts the most harrowing episodes of her life.

The New Yorker