phil shoenfelt

Nick Cave The Bad Seeds author of "And The Ass Saw The Angel"	"Junkie Love - A nice, nasty read. I enjoyed it a lot..."
Ruth Weiss American poet	"This book is tough love. Junkie Love shoots straight for the gut, puts the picture in your face, what a junkie faces from moment to moment, through each night, through each day. That Phil Shoenfelt, the author, is well today to tell it, is a triumph of a soul in its struggle to the light. The art of Jolana Izbická draws a haunting line through Phil Shoenfelt's story, ending with a spiral upward."
Iva Pekárková Czech novelist	"Filled with refreshing graveyard humour, Junkie Love is a gripping soldier's story from the times when a junkie's worst worries were himself and the badly cut drugs."
Michael Gira Angels Of Light / Swans author of "The Consumer"	"Shoenfelt brings a sure, cold, almost empirical precision to his descriptions: ever-descending scenes of brute squalor, self-inflicted wounds and abjection. Ultimately though, what's revealed is an underlying compassion for the characters in Junkie Love, their helplessness in the face of their obsessions, and their misguided, naked need for transcendence and love. A trenchant, cautionary tale that successfully avoids the self-righteous tone of the 'recovered'..."
Nikki Sudden singer / songwriter	"You can always tell a good book by the first line - this is a good book! I first read PS's description of his 1980's Camden Town lifestyle in Prague some five years back and was immediately struck by the quality of his writing. In a way, for the subject matter, this book is as important as William Burrough's Junkie. Too much writing about heroin addiction merely enforces the romance of the drug but Shoenfelt also reveals the darker side of addiction. Not in the grotesquely tainted style of an Irving Welsh but with far greater purity. Some of the scenes depicted are remarkably sleazy but the author never falls into cliché. If this book suffers through anything it's only in its bad timing at appearing after such an overrated book as Trainspotting. If nothing else Junkie Love would make a far better movie. The thing about a junkie lifestyle is it may be sordid and at times unspeakably sleazy but it's still a form of living that is at odds with the way civilisation expects us to behave. When you're a junkie all that really matters is the next fix and how to get it. As Shoenfelt points out the drug is, "For nihilists and hedonists - for people who have either given up trying to make sense of existence... or who don't give a shit about a future they can't see or believe in." It's also a drug that artists have sought solace and inspiration in through the years - it will continue to be so. With his music, especially on his last two albums, Blue Highway and Dead Flowers For Alice Shoenfelt has conjured up a place all of his own. Junkie Love joyously shares the same territory. The best book about heroin since Junkie. An essential read!"
Bizarre Magazin #55, 2002	"A modern evocation of classic fin de siecle literature, complete with classy illustrations and parchment-style paper. This love affair between a man, a woman and a needle goes the same tender, heartbreaking was as Hubert Selby Jr.'s Requiem For A Dream. From the warm glow of kindred spirits binding with the chemical mix of love and heroin to the suppurating end, Junkie Love is as beautifully written as it is presented."
Cherry Bleeds	"Beautiful. A great story of drugs, sex and trying to figure things out in our fucked up world ... neurotic illustrations depicting the psychosis going on in the character's head ... complimenting the written word."
Marianne Truce Apple Of The Eye	"Junkie Love is an autobiographical book gifted with great narrative power ... Shoenfelt succeeds in handling his material beautifully. He reconstructs, scene by scene, a lattice of real events from personal memories, most demanding in their rendering because of their reference point: addiction."
Will Self	"A fine, gutsy, spare rendering of the drug underworld."
Prague Post 12/2001	"Shoenfelt is at his best when describing the psychology of addiction and recording the pains of withdrawal."
Amazon.com review by William Thompson	"The tale Shoenfelt tales is a familiar to anyone who's read 'The Story Of Junk', 'Junky', 'Candy', 'How To Stop Time', namely 'how I fell in and out of love with heroin.' Shöenfelt is very good on the details - you are right in every awful place he shoots up; unsparing and unsentimental about the attractions of heroin; the concactenation of pleasure and humiliation; difficult personal insights addiction can bring and the fact that doesn't redeem the misery you're making of your life and the lives of others. He also has a great sense of humor; the ability to laugh at himself and others; also sympathize with them."
Glitterhouse 08/2003	"Dass Shoenfelt ein Klasse Songschreiber ist, hat er oft genug unter Beweis gestellt, welche Kraft er allerdings als ernsthafter (in diesem Fall stark autobiographischer) Schriftsteller entwickelt, ist dennoch erstaunlich. Junkie Love ist eine extrem packende Story von Verfall, Liebe, Kriminalität, Sucht und Exzess."
New Pages Reviews by Jessica Powers	"This is the one of the best works of fiction I’ve read in a long time. It is a story of addiction, love, and loss, based partly on the experiences of Phil Shoenfelt himself, who was once a heroin junkie and understands a junkie’s need, addiction, desires, and twisted love relationships. Some books and movies about sex and addiction have the tendency to make me feel sick inside. The atmosphere I’m sucked into is dirty air, no light, small rooms - and claustrophobic me just wants OUT. Junkie Love is not that kind of novel. Shoenfelt brilliantly sucked me into that world and spit me out without ever making me claustrophobic. The story of Cissy and the narrator is the story of a search for freedom and wholeness, sought through the medium of heroin. As they get more and more twisted up in their search, their emptiness and hollow existence becomes more and more apparent. They try harder and harder to fill it with heroin. It becomes harder and harder to do. Everything devolves. Life goes to shit. Death is involved. At long last, Shoenfelt resolves to break free, and he does, but with a sense of hope that he can break free of heroin addiction, yet manage to still live on the margins of society, “off the grid,” away from the society of the machine. For this ending, especially, I applaud the book. I can relate to Shoenfelt’s desire not to live the life of the automaton, the person who simply goes to a job to make money to pay bills because that’s what society expects. But how does one get the courage to live off the grid? How does one get the courage to live (legitimately) outside of society’s margins and strict rules of behavior? It makes it easier, I suppose, if you are a recovering junkie. You’ve lived for so long outside of the so-called “norm” that there’s less fear of doing it. Yet Shoenfelt doesn’t offer an example, only hope that it’s possible."
Sonic Seducer	"Der englische Autor Phil Shoenfelt sieht nicht nur äußerlich so aus, als hätte er während seiner ausgedehnten Musiker-Karriere schon jeden Spaß mitgemacht. Mit seiner zweiten Buch-Veröffentlichung "Junkie Love" (Twisted Spoon Press, ISBN 80-86264-17-3) beschreibt der 49-jährige "Mark Burgess mit 70"-Lookalike in größtenteils autobiographischen Zügen das exzessive Leben während der ausgehenden 80er Jahre im ausgeflippten Londoner Stadtteil Camden Town. Gefangen irgendwo zwischen alles bestimmender Drogensucht, hemmungslosem Sex und immer weiter schwindender Hoffnung schildert Shöenfelt mit seinem ganz eigenen tief schwarzen britischen Humor den steilen sozialen Abstieg während der Thatcher-Ära so eindringlich, dass selbst Größen wie Nick Cave oder Michael Gira (Swans, Angels Of Light) stumm in zustimmendes Nicken verfallen."

Phil Shoenfelt	Junkie Love
	2005 Arcana Libri / Controstorie, Italien