The truly eye-opening key of this autobiographical book is the ugly and hairy backside of the trendy media world among which Ms. Glyde chose to spend most of her adult life. It is a world of beautiful writers, hot shot City workers on a six-figure salary, musicians and journalists who dress in expensive designer clothes, who eat and drink in trendy restaurants and clubs and who have impressive flats or houses in the most sought-after neighbourhoods in London. Does Glyde show all this? Tangentially. For she is more interested in explaining why her already bad drinking habit, which started in her teens, becomes worse by living in a world of media darlings so hardened, shallow and soulless that the only way to be liked and accepted as part of the pack - of wolves, I presume - is by drinking yourself to death.

And, after all the drinking, the drug-taking and the unorgasmic casual sex, Glyde realises, once at home, alone, that it does not take her demons away, but makes them stronger; more arrogant, more daring, more challenging. What is more, Glyde, who so desperately wants to be approved and accepted by her successful friends, has to admit, several times during the book, that she does not feel accepted nor approved, feeling as though her circle of friends continuously tightens up, closing ranks against her, leaving her out in the cold. Indeed, her good fortune at becoming a successful freelance writer at the age of twenty-five and, thus, being able to make an array of beautiful London friends and allies is such a shallow picture that all one can feel is lucky not to be part of the wild bunch.

Moral judgements apart, Tanya Glyde�s book is very well written, emphasising the worst characteristic of alcohol as an intoxicating substance: the fact that alcohol is a legal background drug from other illegal drugs which are generally considered to be more damaging for body and mind; yet, nobody pays any attention to that disturbing background. Glyde describes her drunken past and sober present with a dispassionate distance free of self-pity and cheap excuses. She writes in detail of all the drugs she has taken and the effects they have had on her body and mind, and others� bodies and minds; she writes about her numerous failed relationships, about her professional success and how, in spite of it, she usually struggles to pay a �15 bill, because, due to her lifestyle, she is overwhelmingly ridden with debts. All in all, she reflects on her adult life with the objectivity of an entomologist and the reader has to thank her for this, because Glyde does not demand sympathy nor compassion, but understanding. She just wants an ear to listen, not a hand to pat her shoulder.

The pages she dedicates to her childhood are harsh reading, but she hints that the problem might have started there and then, in a deeply unhappy childhood, as an only child whose parents did not show her any affection and could not stand the sight of each other. �I am also an ever-present listening ear and private repository for whatever mood my mother finds herself in, which varies between bitterness, envy, scorn, self-pity and rage. It is instilled in me from a young age that, while seemingly bright and creative, and superior to working-class children, I am pretty much a born failure.�

Tanya Glyde confesses in the book that she has been sober for five years, but she also admits that her new state of sobriety has not led her to specially greater heights in terms of meaningful relationships, financial health or wisdom, but it has enabled her to write a book where she lets her pain and disorientation shine to let others know we are not freaks - �I spent half a lifetime slipping and sliding, one step forward, two steps back, drowning out my feelings and my own needs. Those who know me might not realise that; too many people, it might seem as if I�ve always lived for myself. But in the end I couldn�t work out where I ended and the pain began. I went through an illness stage; a �blaming everyone else� stage and an �I�m fundamentally flawed� stage, and finally got sick of all three. When you start boring yourself, then you know there�s a way out. But it was a long, long journey to get there�. Welcome to the club, sis, booze or no booze. �Cleaning Up� is a remarkable way of telling its readers there is no easy way out of the pain of living. But we all knew that� drunk, sober or somewhere in the middle.

Raquel Mor�n was born in Asturias �Spain- the last year of the sixties, and she is so grateful to Mum and Dad for it. She studied Geography at the University of Oviedo and she went to London in 1996, officially, to study History; unofficially, to become a �serious� writer. Eleven years on, she is still living somewhere in London with her partner and her daughter. She earns her living teaching French and Spanish to unruly secondary students and she is still trying to forge a steady and sound career as a �serious� writer. She does write mainly in Spanish, her mother tongue, and so she considers herself an heir to Cervantes, Cort�zar and Vargas Llosa, among others. She is currently in the process of self-publishing a novel titled Apolo y los centauros �www.trafford.com- and she is also working on her fourth novel, No Smoking, which will be completed, hopefully, before 2010. Hopefully.