Listen free for 30 days
Listen with offer
-
You Left Early
- A True Story of Love and Alcohol
- Narrated by: Louisa Young
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
99p for the first 3 months
Buy Now for £13.00
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Summary
This brutal, beautiful memoir from award-winning novelist Louisa Young is a heartbreaking portrayal of love, grief and the merciless grip of addiction.
Louisa first met Robert Lockhart when they were both 17. Their stop-start romance lasted decades, in which time he became a celebrated composer and she an acclaimed novelist. Always snapping at their heels was Robert’s alcoholism, a helpless, ferocious dependency that affected his personality before crippling and finally, despite five years of hard-won sobriety, killing him.
There are a million love stories and a million stories of addiction. This one is truly transcendent. It is at once a compelling portrait of a unique and charismatic man, a bittersweet reflection on an all-consuming love affair and a completely honest and incredibly affecting guide to how the partner of an alcoholic can possibly survive when the disease rips both their lives apart.
This is a hugely important book. Raw and unflinching but also uplifting and elegiac, it should be essential listening for anybody who’s ever lost someone they loved.
Critic reviews
"Spectacular. I can’t stop thinking about it. Louisa Young is a beautiful, beautiful writer and there is great courage and love in the way she addresses her subject. It’s the portrait of a man and his times and his illness told with love but also with an unflinching honesty that feels like a great gift to the reader." (Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of The Last Act of Love)
"Oh my God, it’s so beautiful, and heartbreaking, and true." (Sam Baker, The Pool)
More from the same
What listeners say about You Left Early
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- susie
- 28-07-18
A masterpiece.
This extraordinary book should be read by anyone living with or alongside alcohol addiction. It is so searingly frank, brave and patently honest, that the pain and effort to write it must have been tremendous. I can only hope the Author has found it, now published and well received, a cathartic and healing experience. As with her other writing, she expresses herself in a scholarly and detailed manner, but with great emotional input. I cannot express strongly enough how listening to Louisa Young read her book makes her love and devotion to Robert Lockhart a truly inspiring read. One is left bereft by the overall sense of 'what might have been'.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- SBud
- 13-07-18
Brave, beautiful...
I cried buckets when Robert died. Thank you Louisa for sharing. Grounding, thought provoking, fascinating. Wonderful love story and heartbreaking tale about addiction.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Tash
- 13-07-18
Stunning and heartbreaking
This book is one of the greats. Never have I experienced a more raw and honest reflection of love and loss.
My new ability to both laugh and cry on the busy morning commute is truly in the hands of Louisa Young.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Louise
- 12-09-19
Flat voice
The introduction is so depressed read by the author in a flat voice I went no further. I’m sure it’s a dark storyline that is worth, but the tone is suicidal.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mrs. Jacqueline M. Carter
- 10-10-19
Heart wrenchingly
Agonising and brilliant, made me cry often, but in the next breath lifted me up again; SO beautifully written and narrated. It felt like a privilege to have been allowed a glimpse into Robert and Louisa's story, special and forever memorable.
😖😎💕
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- ania
- 13-09-19
Dull
I found this book really dull. The author seems to consider an unhealthy and parasitic relationship with Robert - a passionate love affair. I struggled with that approach. Also, Robert, even despite his alcoholism, appears to be an unpleasant, selfish and egocentric man, who uses women as it suits him. This is a very disappointing memoir about alcoholism because the author displays ignorance about this subject.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Linda Weaver
- 16-08-23
Humbling and heart wrenching
Such a heart wrenching tale. The destruction of alcohol can never be underestimated. Louisa was a true heroine and what a love match between herself and Robert. Louisa never gave up on her love for Robert that is true love
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jacqui Hall
- 12-08-23
You left early
Honest , blunt, sad, funny at times, down to earth, and the wasted, brilliant talent that was Robert Lockhart.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- andy schwab
- 17-06-23
complex, challenging but incredibly real
fascinating but stark and irreversibly bleak. the author's own addiction with the narcissistic, pretentious and rancid Robert Lockhart is evidently far more harmful than his relationship with alcohol.
The reflections of what the author sees as halcyon days are presented as bleak and unmoving episodes. as a man in recovery, I often find such memoirs present the addict as likeable or worthy of some sympathy, Robert Lockhart is neither. He is selfish and self obsessed and you often find yourself wanting to tell the author to get out of the relationship. The only real mystery is why she got herself involved in the first place, which is a genius analogy for his own addiction. You find yourself asking why she hasn't left, why she was with him, why she was so patient and never gave up, when he felt the exact same way about alcohol. So wrapped up in his own self importance is Lockhart, so pretentious is much that he says, that he is impossible to empathize or sympathise with.
This is a remarkable book, if you're looking for something that truly reflects how the partners of alcoholics feel. The truly overwhelming happiness I got from knowing the author found love again after Lockhart's death offers relief. When I have recovered from this book I may read more from the author, but I will cross the road to avoid anything that Lockhart produced.
It's emotional and gnarly, and you may find yourself really loathing the smug and self absorbed Lockhart.
exceptional but exhausting read.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 04-02-24
Don’t believe the reviews
The story was utterly predictable, no heart breaks unless you don’t know an alcoholic will die earlier than anticipated. The narrator is ‘lisping’ or have a lazy tongue. Difficult to listen to, and even more so when the book is utterly predictable and boring.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!