Amazon.com Review
"My grandmother Cheever taught me how to embroider, how to say the Lord's Prayer, and how to make a perfect dry martini."

Alcoholism seems to have been a family tradition among the Cheevers. The posthumous publication of pater John Cheever's journals revealed both his fondness for the bottle and his bisexuality; daughter Susan has gone her father one better, publishing a memoir of promiscuity and drunkenness while still alive. In Note in a Bottle, she leaves little to the imagination as she chronicles her career, her many sexual escapades and, of course, her drinking. A typical passage goes something like this:

Warren knows San Francisco so well it's like being in his own house to be there with him. He took me to a bar with wooden booths. We ate delicious chowder and drank white wine. He drank vodka and grapefruit; it was lunchtime but I could see he had just gotten up. I wondered who he had been in bed with. I drank more white wine.... "I still love you," he said, and he kissed me. I was late for dinner with Calvin.