In seeking an alternative to the headlines, Rausing offers thoughtfulness and introspection. She also provides a lot of self-flagellation ... But what gives this book its astonishing power is not the guilt, but the intelligence and literary skill. As a narrative, it’s beautifully structured, weaving its way from the family’s childhood holidays in rural Sweden to their lives in London, returning always to the hideous image of Hans and Eva’s bedroom as the dark centre of the story ... She appears in these contradictions still not to have decided the extent of her responsibility or guilt. However, she seems at least partially aware of this, and what makes the approach effective is that when it comes to opening up wider questions of culpability or the nature of addiction, she is consistently more subtle than we would expect in a memoir of this kind.

Rausing's core message is this: Addiction is a family affair. Her book embraces those surrounding the addict by courageously exposing her own self-doubt and heartache ... Rausing's narrative is delivered in disjointed, non-sequential fragments. Single sentence paragraphs complete sections for emphasis; hers is a jagged presentation that seems intended to mirror addiction's mayhem ... Rausing places her experience within a broader context. She considers Amy Winehouse, she cites Patty Hearst. She highlights America's opioid blight to remind us that addiction is not solely a family affair, it's a societal pathology.

The memoir, at once elliptical, cerebral and peppered with literary allusions, sometimes lacks the visceral edge inevitable in an observer locked out of the couple’s drug den. Ms. Rausing describes how Eva and Hans would spend days in their mansion getting high, Eva reduced to skin and bones. She fantasizes about kidnapping and saving her brother. She never does ... By the end of the memoir, one cannot help but feel empathy for Ms. Rausing’s attempt to take ownership of a narrative hijacked by lurid tabloid newspapers, even as her wealthy upbringing taught her to be silent and discreet. In that we can, perhaps, feel the ghost of Eva Rausing prodding her along. After all, she notes, 'Someone died, early one morning or late one night.'

Mayhem is less about Eva, or even Hans, than the strange guilt of being a witness to addiction and presuming to tell of it: an honest attempt to piece together recollection from a time almost beyond recollection ... Mayhem is good on the 'power of denial' that inhibits a class of moneyed people from acknowledging mental ill-health ... Rausing is rightfully sceptical of the clichés of 'recovery-speak.' But books that describe arcs of affliction and recovery, being engaged with this language and also with a familiar journey to redemption, often end up deferring to these clichés. And so the elegant writing in Mayhem can give way to descriptions of drug addiction as a 'perfect storm' or a 'bubble' ... Mayhem is most moving when circumnavigating the events and people described...The book is less compelling when Rausing puts forward her own beliefs about the scientific nature of addiction, which do not necessarily gain from personal experience. But where it is successful is as a case study of the 'addiction to the addiction,' as Rausing calls it: the empathic burden inherited by those close to addicts, from which the author, writing this harrowing book, is rehabilitating herself.

Rausing has clearly written Mayhem to wrest this gruesome story back from the British tabloid media, who have already mercilessly picked it apart. But she does far more. In this slim, stoic memoir—epigrammatic and laced with literary and scholarly references—Rausing thoughtfully, painstakingly, works a deep groove into the stubborn surface of certain bedeviling questions ... In many ways, Rausing’s haunting memoir is doing the only thing we can in the face of such a threat: gather our memories like specimens in a lab and work with them in various combinations, trying to stave off the disease, trying to figure something out.

Rausing explores this tragedy with grace, humility, and razor-sharp insight. Throughout, she attempts to better understand the fierce compulsions of addiction. After Eva’s death, Rausing’s family was the subject of relentless Swedish tabloid coverage. Rausing concludes, '[Mayhem] implies guilt, which is appropriate in this context, since there is no addict story that doesn’t revolve around guilt, shame and judgment.' Her writing is rich with humble wisdom.

The narrative resonates because Rausing, a private person, shares intimate memories and expresses her sentiments about events that the media sensationalized. As she understands it, addiction is not only a family disease, but also an 'endlessly revolving merry-go-round' that keeps addicts and family members trapped in alternating victim/victimizer roles of 'guards and hostages.' A stylish and devastatingly lucid memoir.