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For years Caroline Knapp was a successful editor and columnist at the Boston Phoenix who went home and drank, hiding bottles in her parents’ bathroom while they were dying of cancer, a year apart. She had her first drink at twelve and gave alcohol up at thirty-three, after about twenty years of it. The book she wrote about it, Drinking: A Love Story (1996), became a New York Times best-seller and was translated into more than a dozen languages. She wrote two more books in her lifetime, about her dog and about her columns’ alter ego, and finished a fourth, on women and appetite, just before she was diagnosed with lung cancer. She died in June 2002, aged 42. This guide covers her 5 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 key books · 1994–2004 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Caroline Knapp wrote five books: Alice K.’s Guide to Life (1994), Drinking: A Love Story (1996), Pack of Two (1998), and two published after her death, Appetites: Why Women Want (2003) and The Merry Recluse (2004). Start with Drinking; the others return to the same questions of hunger, solitude and attachment from different sides.
Where to Start with Caroline Knapp
If you want her defining book
→ Drinking (1996) — her twenty years with alcohol, and how she stopped.
If you want the dog book
→ Pack of Two (1998) — life with Lucille, and why people love dogs the way they do.
If you want her on food and desire
→ Appetites (2003) — anorexia, and why women hold back what they want.
If you want her shorter pieces
→ The Merry Recluse (2004) — columns and essays from the 1980s until her death.
5 Caroline Knapp Books, in Order
Alice K.’s Guide to Life
Her first book, published by Plume, collects the columns she wrote for the Boston Phoenix about “Alice K. (not her real initial)”, her neurotic alter ego, from her column “Out There”. It was the first of the three books she published in her lifetime.
Drinking
A memoir of about twenty years of drinking by a high-functioning alcoholic who kept her job, drank through her parents’ deaths a year apart and hid two relationships from each other. Learning that her father, a prominent psychiatrist, had also been an alcoholic set her towards a clinic, rehab and nightly AA meetings. She also ties drinking to the anorexia she had in her twenties. Published by Dial, it was a New York Times best-seller; Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, calling it “extraordinarily lucid”.
Pack of Two
Knapp adopted Lucille, a shepherd mix, from the local pound soon after her parents had died and she had stopped drinking. The book combines her life with Lucille with a survey of dog writers, trainers and behaviourists, from Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson to the Monks of New Skete, asking why people give dogs a love they may never risk with another person. It was also a New York Times best-seller.
Appetites
Finished shortly before her diagnosis and published by Counterpoint the year after her death. Knapp describes the anorexia that began when she was a 19-year-old junior at Brown, and links it to compulsive shopping, drinking and other ways women suppress what they want, looking at her mother, the media and the culture. She credits her dog, rowing and a stable relationship with helping her recover. Kirkus called her “an eloquent voice that will be missed”.
The Merry Recluse
A posthumous collection of her columns and essays from the 1980s until her death, grouped by theme in five parts: “Without” (grief, loss and sobriety), “With”, “Out There”, “In Here” and “The Merry Recluse”, on solitude, shyness and living alone. The lighter pieces include a dogs-versus-cats exchange with the columnist Ron Rosenbaum.
In What Order to Read Caroline Knapp
Her books stand alone, but they are one long piece of work: drinking, starving, shopping and attaching herself to a dog are, for Knapp, versions of the same question about hunger and fear. Reading them in publication order follows her from the jokey columns of the early 1990s to the much more searching last book.
Most readers start with Drinking, then go to Appetites, which takes its argument about addiction further. The Merry Recluse works best last, once you know the life behind the columns.
A reading path
1. Drinking: A Love Story (1996)
2. Pack of Two (1998)
3. Appetites: Why Women Want (2003)
4. The Merry Recluse (2004)
5. Alice K.’s Guide to Life (1994)
The years · 1959–2010
Quick facts about Caroline Knapp
- Known for
- Drinking: A Love Story (1996), a frank memoir of her years as a high-functioning alcoholic, often cited as a key book about women and alcohol
- 1959
- Born; grows up in Cambridge, Massachusetts
- 1981
- Graduates from Brown University
- 1988
- Joins the Boston Phoenix
- 2010
- Gail Caldwell’s memoir of their friendship
- Born
- 8 November 1959; grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts
- Family
- Daughter of the psychiatrist Peter H. Knapp; twin sister of Rebecca
- Education
- Brown University, 1981, magna cum laude
- Worked
- Boston Phoenix, 1988–1995; its “Out There” column until 1999
- Married
- The photographer Mark Morelli, in May 2002
- Died
- 3 June 2002, Mount Auburn Hospital, Cambridge, of lung cancer, aged 42
The red mark is 1996: Drinking: A Love Story, her memoir of twenty years with alcohol.
How Caroline Knapp Writes: Ruthlessly Self-Revealing
Her Phoenix colleagues described her as reserved in person and “ruthlessly self-revelatory at the keyboard”. Her subject was nearly always herself: the bottles hidden in her parents’ bathroom, two boyfriends kept apart, the calories counted at Brown, the shy woman happiest alone with her dog.
She rarely writes pure memoir, though. Drinking moves from her own story to how addiction works and why women are drawn to it; Pack of Two sets her life with Lucille against trainers, behaviourists and writers on dogs; Appetites uses research on eating disorders, the media and women’s lives to widen a story about anorexia into an argument about desire.
One idea runs through all of it: that drinking, starving, shopping and loving a dog can all be ways of managing hunger and fear. Her earliest work, the Alice K. columns, treats the same anxieties as comedy; by Appetites she treats them as the main question of her life.
Frequently asked questions about Caroline Knapp’s books
How many books has Caroline Knapp written?
Five. Three appeared in her lifetime: Alice K.’s Guide to Life (1994), Drinking: A Love Story (1996) and Pack of Two (1998). Two were published after her death in 2002: Appetites: Why Women Want (2003) and The Merry Recluse (2004).
What are Caroline Knapp’s books in order?
Alice K.’s Guide to Life (1994), Drinking: A Love Story (1996), Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs (1998), Appetites: Why Women Want (2003) and The Merry Recluse: A Life in Essays (2004).
Where should I start with Caroline Knapp?
With Drinking: A Love Story. It is her best-known book, and the others, especially Appetites, build on its ideas about addiction and hunger.
What is Caroline Knapp’s most famous book?
Drinking: A Love Story (1996), her memoir of about twenty years as a high-functioning alcoholic. It was a New York Times best-seller and was translated into more than a dozen languages.
Is Caroline Knapp still alive?
No. She died of lung cancer on 3 June 2002 at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, aged 42. She had been diagnosed in mid-April and married her long-time companion, the photographer Mark Morelli, in May.
Who is Alice K.?
Knapp’s alter ego in her Boston Phoenix column “Out There”: a neurotic, thinly disguised version of herself, “Alice K. (not her real initial)”. The columns became her first book, Alice K.’s Guide to Life (1994).
What book did Gail Caldwell write about Caroline Knapp?
Let’s Take the Long Way Home (2010), a memoir of their friendship. The two writers met in 1996, both had stopped drinking at 33, walked their dogs Clementine and Lucille together around Fresh Pond, and taught each other to swim and row. Caldwell was with Knapp through her illness.
Who was Lucille in Pack of Two?
Knapp’s dog, a shepherd mix she adopted from the local pound after her parents died and she stopped drinking. Lucille is at the centre of Pack of Two (1998) and was with her in her final days.
Did Caroline Knapp write about anorexia?
Yes. She had anorexia from the age of 19, when she was at Brown. She touches on it in Drinking and makes it the centre of Appetites: Why Women Want (2003), and an early essay on it appears in The Merry Recluse.
Footnotes
- Caroline Knapp — Wikipedia
- Caroline Knapp, 1959–2002 — The Phoenix, 2002
- One Woman’s Quest — Brown Alumni Magazine
- Drinking: A Love Story — Kirkus Reviews
- Appetites — Kirkus Reviews
- Let’s Take the Long Way Home — The Christian Science Monitor, 2010
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Stop suffering. Stop being so self-destructive. Stop killing yourself.”
— Caroline Knapp, Drinking: A Love Story (1996), on what her dying mother meant by “Stop smoking”
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