NONFICTION - Oct. 10, 1993

TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME: Memoirs of a Survivor by Susan Gordon Lydon (Harper San Francisco: $22.; 290 pp.) It’s possible to isolate the exact moment when Susan Gordon Lydon’s memoir, “Take the Long Way Home,” is transformed from a generic testimonial to a work of enormous power and grace. In the middle of Page 108, Lydon, an educated, articulate free-lance journalist, starts to do heroin on a consistent basis. At that point, “Take the Long Way Home” begins to chronicle her slide downward through shooting galleries, prostitution and failed attempts at “kicking.” It is so effective that even though I knew Lydon is now in recovery I still remained convinced she would die.

“So I ended up driving around, with no license, in the car I had taken from my mother, with my (crack) pipe in my mouth and the needle in my hand, trying to find a vein, while the car was moving. I was totally insane.” After she goes to live at Women Inc., a Boston recovery house that’s the mental equivalent of boot camp, the tone changes yet again to encompass a profound spiritual and psychological healing that could, in the hands of a less-skilled writer, seem indulgent. But that’s not Lydon. In spite of an uneven first 100 pages, this is an extremely brave and moving book.