Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls

A Memoir of Women, Addiction, and Love

By: Nina Renata Aron

Narrated by: Nina Renata Aron

Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

A scorching memoir of a love affair with an addict, weaving personal reckoning with psychology and history to understand the nature of addiction, codependency, and our appetite for obsessive love

"Ferocious...glints with hard-won truths...Aron lights a path through the darkness of her past toward a better future." (Los Angeles Times)

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by Parade

"The disease he has is addiction," Nina Renata Aron writes of her boyfriend, K. "The disease I have is loving him." Their love affair is dramatic, urgent, overwhelming - an intoxicating antidote to the long, lonely days of early motherhood. Soon after they get together, K starts using again, and years of relapses and broken promises follow. Even as his addiction deepens, she stays, convinced she is the one who can get him sober. After an adolescence marred by family trauma and addiction, Nina can’t help but feel responsible for those suffering around her. How can she break this pattern? If she leaves K, has she failed him?

Writing in prose at once unflinching and acrobatic, Aron delivers a piercing memoir of romance and addiction, drawing on intimate anecdotes as well as academic research to crack open the long-feminized and overlooked phenomenon of codependency. She shifts between visceral, ferocious accounts of her affair with K and introspective analyses of the part she plays in his addictions, as well as defining moments in the history of codependency, from the temperance movement to the formation of Al-Anon to more recent research in the psychology of addiction. Good Morning, Destroyer of Men’s Souls is a blazing, bighearted book that illuminates and adds nuance to the messy tethers between femininity, enabling, and love.

Praise for Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls

"Unflinching...Aron writes in gripping prose about the thrills and dangers of her own substance use and relationship with K - their weak-kneed passion and wolfish needs, as well as her guilt-ridden enabling and savior-complex optimism." (San Francisco Chronicle)

"In Nina Renata Aron’s scorching, unvarnished memoir, an addiction story gets spun from the perspective of the helpless partner, the lover too stuck in a dangerous dynamic to find her way out." (Entertainment Weekly)

"A raw and eloquently unflinching memoir." (Kirkus Reviews)

©2020 Nina Renata Aron (P)2020 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“In Aron’s candid and heart-wrenching memoir, the gnarled knots of love and addiction are untied and tangled and tied again....Her compassion for victims of addiction never wavers, and her presentation of the addicted people in her life is dynamic and fair. A beautiful, nuanced portrait of living alongside addiction.” (Booklist (starred review)"

“I was riveted by Nina Renata Aron’s incandescent memoir from the first page to the last. What a marvel this book is, that such a harrowing subject can be rendered with such tenderness. Any person who has ever put herself in harm’s way for love will see herself in these pages. I have no doubt that this will be one of the best books of 2020.” (Mary Beth Keane, New York Times best-selling author of Ask Again, Yes)

“Aron is a truth-telling badass with an irresistible voice. Balancing extensive research with dazzling, affecting prose, Good Morning, Destroyer of Men’s Souls is both a whip-smart addition to the literature of addiction and an intimate look at the beating heart of codependency. It’s a propulsive story of empathy, desire, recklessness, and the things we risk for love. I couldn't put it down.” (Kimberly King Parsons, author of the National Book Award-nominated Black Light)

Unflinching Look into Codependency/Addiction

Nina is a beautiful writer, piecing together her own life story and the history behind the different fellowships for addicts (AA/NA) and for those that love an addict (Al-Anon). While this book focuses on the (commonly found) relationship between a codependent and an addict, I truly believe any woman could benefit from reading it. We are often brought up to believe in rom-com ideas of love; dramatic and unsustainable, which can lead to women finding themselves in Nina’s very position. It can also pave the way for codependent people to get healthy themselves.

I also loved that I chose to listen to the audio because her voice just speaks her already beautifully written words like poetry.

amazing

this book is incredible. i could not stop listening. she is so real and raw. i felt like i learned so much about myself and about the reality of the diseases of both addiction and codependency through her stories and lessons. my heart was broken to pieces along the way but also uplifted. 10/10!

just incredible. moving. damn good.

This is a book so beautifully written that I want to marinate in the prose of it's pages in small bites, and simultaneously gorge myself on the too-relatable, heartbreaking story of being an imperfect human in love with an imperfect human. it is, thankfully, read by the author, who gifts us at times with her relative self-depricating humor that sounds like an amused raised eyebrow, and at others the swelling sadness of her heartbreak or attempts to numb it. there were so many times I found myself laughing out loud, sighing deeply or audibly replying "FUCK," and "seriously, right?" to particularly relatable passages as a fellow newly sober textbook codependent. I'm a book-lover, and I love this book more than any book I've read this past year, especially impressive as covid 19 has given me so much more time to read.

please read. it is so good and important.

The best book I’ve ever listened to!!

Cried a number of times over the beautiful writing! I’m listening to it a second time.

If you struggle with codependency, you’re gonna feel this one.

For anyone who has drained themselves of energy, time, dignity, or strength to give it to someone else without a thought. Nina’s words pierced me and made me “Mm” aloud in my empty car as I listened. A beautiful combination of women’s history, lovely but painful prose, and vivid imagery that left me unable to stop for hours and hours on end.

AMAZING!!

Honestly the truth of the whole story is what made it so much worth it all

Modern Day Epic Poem

Each chapter of this deeply personal memoir is its own masterful story arc and a marvel of subtle alliteration. Truly one of the best books I’ve ever read or listened to, and because I didn’t want it to end, I have done both.

While the book itself is a beautiful tome, Nina Aron’s voice verges on ASMR in its soothing cadence, even in its delivery of heartbreak and trial by fire personal evolution.

This work of literary art is both relevant and timeless... Not to be missed.

Relateable

I was glad to be able to listen to this while packing to leave my campus apartment after college graduation in 2 weeks..As a 47 yest old recovering codependent, I felt this in all the ways. Bravo.

Outstanding recourse.

couldn't put it ⬇️. page Turner and scenic route of literature in dark humor and dark theme.

Stunning

As informative as it is eloquent, this honest and vivid memoir has left my heart and mind full. There are so many things about codependency, love, and addiction I have tried and failed to understand. But in her telling of her own story, I feel able to start cracking the code. I walked into it with judgement and preconceptions and walked away with a ton of compassion.