Repenting at leisure: Early Sobrieties, by Michael Deagler, reviewed
Garlanded with praise from Percival Everett (‘the real deal’), Michael Deagler’s debut novel Early Sobrieties arrives with a fully formed literary voice best described as hysterical understatement. ‘Like all histories,’ Deagler’s twentysomething ex-alcoholic protagonist Dennis Monk tells us early on, ‘my family’s seemed composed of a series of recurring mistakes that, while theoretically avoidable, tended