I read Live By The Bottle in a single burst, intrigued by the
way the language of poetry and dreams twists through the
narrative, proffering Jungian threads, and beckoned by the
familiarity of Madeline Mills’ story, a modern woman’s tale.

– Frances Paterson, songwriter


"Writing's what you do when you're desperate," Madeline Mills writes in her journal, two months before committing unpremeditated murder. The mounting sense of claustrophobic menace that Margaret Metz evokes within the insular suburban idyll of Koala Bay is both sharpened and offset by such quotes.

As well, Madeline's dreams, poems and short prose pieces strewn the length of the narrative like stray flowers through dense bush — or like a madwoman's breakfast, which we'll read about after the climax — inject a surreal dimension into a text of relentless realism and reveal subtleties that Madeline's actions lack.

Any woman who's ever lived with an unreconstructed alcoholic man (a sizable target market in Australia!) may well derive guilty pleasure from Live by the Bottle, which reads like the flipside of the classic AA testimonial, as we witness the decay of love through the alcoholic's partner's eyes.

In the first scene they share, we discover that Madeline and Gordon are far from suited to each other. Each subsequent scene charts a downhill slide. Yet, however we judge her will to control or his abject passivity, their tale compels because we know its truth from the outside or the inside. Possessed of a rare gift for dialogue, Margaret Metz records conversations that make us wince with recognition. Nor does she pull any punches in the bedroom or when conflicts get physical.

In this novel about the shadow cast by unrecognised creativity and frustrated sexuality, which may not always be distinguishable from each other, Margaret Metz offers riveting insights into what drives individuals to violence and to drink.

– Sue Booker, novelist