How to Murder Your Life

A Memoir

By: Cat Marnell

Narrated by: Cat Marnell

Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

From Cat Marnell, "New York's enfant terrible" (The Telegraph), a candid and darkly humorous memoir of prescription drug addiction and self-sabotage, set in the glamorous world of fashion magazines and downtown nightclubs.

At 26 Cat Marnell was an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America - and that's all most people knew about her. But she hid a secret life. She was a prescription drug addict. She was also a "doctor shopper" who manipulated Upper East Side psychiatrists for pills, pills, and more pills; a lonely bulimic who spent hundreds of dollars a week on binge foods; a promiscuous party girl who danced barefoot on banquets; a weepy and hallucination-prone insomniac who would take anything - anything - to sleep.

This is a tale of self-loathing, self-sabotage, and, yes, self-tanner. It begins at a posh New England prep school - and with a prescription for attention deficit disorder medication Ritalin. It continues to New York, where we follow Marnell's amphetamine-fueled rise from intern to editor through the beauty departments of NYLON, Teen Vogue, Glamour, and Lucky. We see her fight between ambition and addiction and how, inevitably, her disease threatens everything she worked so hard to achieve.

From the Conde Nast building (where she rides the elevator alongside Anna Wintour) to seedy nightclubs, from doctors' offices and mental hospitals, Marnell shows - like no one else can - what it is like to live in the wild, chaotic, often sinister world of a young female addict who can't say no.

Combining lightning-rod subject matter and bold literary aspirations, How to Murder Your Life is mesmerizing, revelatory, and necessary.

©2017 Cat Marnell (P)2017 Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Very interesting!

While the story itself is heartbreaking, Cat is a fantastic storyteller. I could listen to her for hours. She's bright, funny, humble and self-aware. I'm sorry for all she has gone through but I admire her courage to write this. One of the best books I've listened to in a long time.

not bad

I expected Cat to have a raspier voice, given the smoking and drug abuse... but her voice is kind of lovely.

I listened to this book in 24 hrs, at work and on my train ride home. It was kind of like having a very dysfunctional friend around - or listening to my twenty something year old self minus the cool career.

I really enjoyed the story, and Cats fake screams were always laughable.

Thanks!

Sociopath

Everything she put herself and others through...she didn't learn anything. She'll do it again.

too much screaming

the story was good, there was too much information about her job, I got bored in those chapters.... but there was also so. much. screaming. every time she screamed I winced and debated returning the book.

Stay alive Kat!

I have listened to this at least 10 times. Kat has an amazing voice, a vulnerable, honest, striking tale. Love it

Could NOT STOP listening and CANNOT STOP talking about it

Story so engrossing I may have to listen again. Found myself wanting to yell “get your $#!t together” while at the same time wide eyed and completely transfixed at the total self destruction.

Listened in 48 hours!

I loved this Audiobook. Listening to Cat tell her story of drug addiction shed so much light on the secret world of spiraling into addiction to prescription meds. I appreciate her shameless honesty about all her endeavors! Thanks Cat Marnell. 100% would recommend to anyone interested in overcoming addiction.

It's OK with a lot of yikes

At least she admits in the beginning that's it's a story about a privileged girl. she's given chance after chance. her story isn't impossible to listen to but 1. the screams and sounds she makes get old and unbearable FAST (ESPECIALLY in that one chapter..) and 2. everyone is white in this story and Cat loves to remind you of that. IDK how any new Yorker cannot have even a smidge of diversity in their ranks. it wouldn't have added to the story but hearing just how white everyone was got almost as annoying as the screaming

nice book

Every time she does her screaming voice I want to stab myself in the ears with a butter knife. Otherwise pretty good.

Entertaining Book on Important Topic

I took one star off the performance because Cat Marnell reads it herself and screams a lot, especially when she sees "mice": I had to keep turning it down, especially in public. But overall it's a great listen. It was very courageous to write and publish the chapter about her child and young-adulthood. Probably the pleasure for me in listening to a book about nearly insoluble problems is that you, the listener, can think "Hey, my life may be bad, but hers is REALLY bad!" For those of you who say she's "spoiled" I disagree. She was deprived. The things that she DID have - money, beauty, etc. - only deprived her more. But she's tough and, I'm guessing, will survive.