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  • You Left Early

  • A True Story of Love and Alcohol
  • By: Louisa Young
  • Narrated by: Louisa Young
  • Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (177 ratings)
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You Left Early cover art

You Left Early

By: Louisa Young
Narrated by: Louisa Young
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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.

©2018 Louisa Young (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

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)

What listeners say about You Left Early

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

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'.


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8 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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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.

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7 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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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.

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7 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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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.

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5 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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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.
😖😎💕

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3 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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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.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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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

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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You left early

Honest , blunt, sad, funny at times, down to earth, and the wasted, brilliant talent that was Robert Lockhart.

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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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.

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1 person found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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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.

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