Five Must-Read Memoirs: Inspiring, Surprising Examples of Modern Lives
What makes a great memoir? Lives transformed. Lessons learned. Life rendered in gorgeous prose. Relatable dilemmas and situations. Memoirs are the stories of ordinary lives just writ a bit larger, and extraordinary lives brought down to earth through accessible storytelling. If what makes a great memoir is different for every reader, the thru-line is that it feels true, it feels fascinating, and it feels universal enough that we see ourselves on the pages in some way. One more thing — each book has a glow to it. Once it’s done, it still lights up the reader’s imagination.
These five books all have that kind of glow. They include a classic that sets the standard — its author is synonymous with the form; as well as four other books that each add something else to the genre. They’re about the quest to find oneself, to heal from old wounds and fix the broken parts, to redefine the nature of love. These writers fight for grace, for lightness, for happiness, and for peace. For the most part, they get it, imperfect or not.
The Tell: A Memoir, by Amy Griffin is a powerful book that looks at the ways we hide from ourselves, and what happens when we start to share our stories. Griffin may lead a charmed life — gorgeous kids, extremely successful career, adoring, also successful husband — but there’s a dark side to all that perfection. She’s aimed to please at the profound expense of herself. That she’s a runner isn’t just a metaphor, it’s an operating principle hiding a tragic secret. With the help of psychedelic therapy, she discovers the long-buried secret of what happened to her back in middle school in Amarillo Texas. Her pursuit of the truth, of justice, and of coming to terms with herself in the world is beautifully told. No surprise that this was an Oprah Book Club pick.
Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story by Leslie Jamison is a memoir about a broken marriage and the sweet ferocity of a mother’s love for her daughter. It’s beautifully written. Jamison, well-known for her essays, has a knack for detailing complexity. She conveys her own regrets, her watchfulness, her powerful maternal instinct, the unsettling realities of new love and the push-pull between all the parts of herself. This is also a book about digging into the psyche — and finding how memories and long-buried experiences can wreak own havoc on attachments. A smart, penetrating, enjoyable, readable book.
Untangling: A Memoir of Psychoanalysis by Joan K. Peters is surprising, brave, and gripping. It’s also an extremely rare account of the arduous, amazing process of psychoanalysis from a patient’s point of view. Usually, it’s the psychoanalysts doing the telling, and patients just serve as clinical examples. Here, the patient owns her own story, and it’s a thrilling one. Peters had a seemingly good life — except for recurring nightmares so terrifying they invaded her equilibrium, her sense of self, and her relationship. Entering psychoanalysis to try to uncover the demons that lurked within her psyche, she has no idea how long it’s going to take, but she’s in it for the long haul. As it turns out, it takes two separate psychoanalysts to uncover, reconcile, and then heal. Peters, an author and professor, is candid about her own turbulent emotions, ugly or not. She doesn’t dress up her wild thoughts or emotional battles. Along with tracking the process of discovering the terrible causes of her nightmares, she reveals the intricacies of this form of therapy, including her relationships with her therapists, particularly the second one. This is a page-turner: we’re caught up in each moment, driven to find out what happens next, and ultimately, relieved that finally, Peters is free.
Lit: A Memoir (P.S.) by Mary Karr is one of a definitive classic that a list of great memoirs shouldn’t be without. Karr is one of the most celebrated memoirists, poets and essayists of her generation — and her memoirs as well as her ability to democratize the process has inspired countless writers to put pen to paper (so to speak). Lit is her third book: it came out in 2009 but it’s still having an impact. With her typical precision and humor, Karr calls it her ” journey from blackbelt sinner and lifelong agnostic to unlikely Catholic.” The child of alcoholics, she wound up turning to a bottle of Jack Daniels every day as a mother herself, and finally found redemption in prayer and faith. There’s nothing treacly or cottagecore about the story, and Karr isn’t your textbook Catholic. The incredible dance she chronicles — between addiction and awe — is what makes the book such a masterpiece. This edition has some great extra information; that’s what the “P.S.” stands for.
Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks just came out — and it’s a stunner. Brooks, an Australian-American writer, is a literary powerhouse no matter what she writes — journalism, novels, nonfiction. But her latest is a tender, elegiac: after her husband literally drops dead suddenly and with no warning, she’s swept up in the tedium and business of modern life, just with a hole punched through it. Finally she escapes to a remote island in Australia, lives in a shack, and has the chance to mourn and process her cataclysmic loss. There’s so much to love in this book, including her portrayal of live itself — and her portrayal of her husband, Tony Horwitz. This is a book about transformation in the truest sense of the word: chosen or not, it’s a journey that has to happen.
If there’s a shared theme in all of these books, it’s how life progresses whether or not we face our demons or our pain. It can just take circuitous, strange detours, insisting we confront what we’re not confronting, or live with the consequences. Self-discovery can be scary; a road untraveled for a reason. But we can all take courage and inspiration from others’ stories — especially when they’re told as eloquently as these are.