Running in Circles

A Memoir

By: Eva Yin

Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen

Eighteen-year-old Eva Yin is admitted into an ER in the San Francisco Bay Area for a serious blood infection - the souvenir of a missed shot of heroin. Barely recovered and against medical advice, she leaves the hospital for New York City only to end up homeless and facing prostitution and violence.

Being a heroin addict is like running in circles. You run, and you run, and you end up exactly where you started. In the end, Eva finally stops running but only after crossing the span of an entire continent and coming back to the shores of California - she is back where she started, but she isn't the same.

Running in Circles is the unflinching true story of one woman's struggle and recovery from heroin addiction.

Contains mature themes.

©2016 Eva Yin (P)2018 Tantor

worth reading

It is worth reading. I think it could have been better laid out, and detailed. I was a little disappointed to not find out things by the end, such as solo and where he was or what he had been up to. even Sierra and her boyfriend and how they were by the end.

Hard to believe this is a "memoir". Exaggerated?

I will write more later when this NYC hood rat - (myself) am clean enough to accurately describe what it's REALLY like, and is motivated enough to finish this.

Powerful

The soft way addiction sucks you in. Her journey across the country and back to find herself. Powerful. Her story brings the reality of addiction to life.

Interesting

If you hope to get anything about recovery out of this book, look for another one. This seems more like a book of more stories than anything else, but it is interesting.

Waste of time

This memoir claims to be about addiction, but instead the author tells us in repeatative detail about her voluntarily spending a few weeks living on the streets of New York city while using heroin. The book reads like a teenager's diary and 90% of the book is just the endless immature conversations she has every single day with the other homeless criminals whom she argues with, uses drugs with, talks to, panhandles with and sleeps with. The author intentionally made herself homeless as an experiment all while she had a home and family to return to in San Francisco. Then suddenly, in the last few pages of the book, she claims to have gotten sober after she returned home, but doesn't explain how she did it or what she did with her life afterwards. None of the characters are likeable and they, as well as their elementary speech, seem drawn from TV programs. Overall, this story doesn't come across as true. (The narrator did a good job.)