From the outside, Seana Smith lived an enviable life. An Oxford graduate, a successful career with the BBC and Sydney’s Channel 9, a bestselling author, happily married. But behind this perfect life she had a secret: Seana was a drinker, and alcohol was slowly taking away her life, destroying her health, her emotional well-being, her world.
With engaging style and wit, Going Under reveals the true story behind Seana’s lifelong battle with drink. It lays bare a confusing childhood of Scottish sailing adventures and also brutal violence from her bullying, alcoholic father; where punches were thrown, broken bones hidden and her family lived in fear.
Learning from the best, Seana drank her way through tutorials at Oxford University (which were held in the pub), through the sexual misadventures of her twenties and through the intensity and mundanity of motherhood.
It took the death of her parents and a tree-change to Orange in regional NSW for Seana to find the courage to break free; a new life in a new world. She had finally left the past behind.
Growing up with an abusive alcoholic father and finding the courage to escape.
Crosses between Edinburgh, Oxford University, Sydney and Orange, NSW. Compelling combination of women’s quit lit and memoir.
The intensity and loneliness of motherhood laid bare.
Explores the pain of emigration and finding belonging in a new world.
This is a memoir long in the making and is a powerful testament to resilience, acceptance and ultimately love.
A story of recovery and sobriety for fans of The Sober Diaries, Beyond Booze and A Thousand Wasted Sundays.
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Going Under is funny, insightful and inspiring. This is like hanging out with a really brilliant friend who, you know, will make you a better person.
Seana Smith is the real deal - a truth-teller and a writer of immense integrity.
Kathryn Heyman
Author of Fury
With a tender touch, Smith contemplates the two truths of her childhood: the wild island adventures and the brutal eruptions behind closed doors. Standing on the precipice of her own alcoholism, she realizes that reckoning with the past is the only way to shape the future.
Jenny Valentish
Author of Woman of Substances
With sparkling, musical prose and unflinching generosity of spirit, Seana Smith lays bare the facts of a life stalked by alcohol. A life that ricochets ‘between privilege and terror, between adventure and fear.
So much more than a book about the booze, Going Under is an intricate, often beautiful mosaic of family, the individuals caught inside its sharp-edged cracks, and the self-yearning to make sense of all it all. The story of a woman emerging from the brokenness of the past and the never-ending pressures of the present to reclaim joy.
Honest. Tender. Laugh-cry funny. Walking with Seana through her year of Going Under is to make a new and wise friend.
Kim Kelly, author of Ladies’ Rest and Writing Room
