About this item
From Cat Marnell, "New York's enfant terrible" (The Telegraph) , a candid and darkly humorous memoir of prescription drug addiction and self-sabotage, set in the glamorous world of fashion magazines and downtown nightclubs.At twenty-six, Cat Marnell was an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America - and that's all most people knew about her. But she hid a secret life. She was a prescription drug addict. She was also a "doctor shopper" who manipulated Upper East Side psychiatrists for pills, pills, and more pills; a lonely bulimic who spent hundreds of dollars a week on binge foods; a promiscuous party girl who danced barefoot on banquets; a weepy and hallucination-prone insomniac who would take anything - anything - to sleep. This is a tale of self-loathing, self-sabotage, and yes, self-tanner. It begins at a posh New England prep school - and with a prescription for Attention Deficit Disorder medication Ritalin. It continues to New York, where we follow Marnell's amphetamine-fueled rise from intern to editor through the beauty departments of NYLON, Teen Vogue, Glamour, and Lucky. We see her fight between ambition and addiction and how, inevitably, her disease threatens everything she worked so hard to achieve. From the Cond Nast building (where she rides the elevator alongside Anna Wintour) to seedy nightclubs, from doctors' offices and mental hospitals, Marnell shows - like no one else can - what it is like to live in the wild, chaotic, often sinister world of a young female addict who can't say no. Combining lightning-rod subject matter and bold literary aspirations, How to Murder Your Life is mesmerizing, revelatory, and necessary.
About the Author
CAT MARNELL was a beauty editor at LUCKY magazine. She also worked in the beauty departments of NY/LON, TEEN VOGUE, and GLAMOUR magazines. She wrote the 'Amphetamine Logic' column for VICE and was a founding editor of Jane Pratt's website xoJane.com. Cat lives in downtown New York City. 'How To Murder Your Life' is her first book.
