Review: Fat Girl (memoir)

It took me a few false starts to write a review of Fat Girl: A True Story. I guess that in and of itself is a statement: this book is so thought-provoking it took me weeks to digest its contents, while at the same time being so scattered and narratively unfocused as...

Review: Every Secret Thing (memoir)

It’s taken me a while to write a review of this book – I think I love it so much my review can’t possibly live up to the book. For a description of the book’s plot and relevant reader comments, check out amazon.co.uk (not .com). Essentially,...

On Traumatic Memoir

This explains so much! [T]rauma-based accounts are often private salvage operations. Rather than assuming continuity, they must, at the deepest level, reflect and somehow compensate for its destruction. For a trauma is a rupture, a break … whether brought on by a...

Truth in Non-Fiction and Memoir

[S]cholars have demonstrated the essential fictive nature of all memory. The way we remember things is not necessarily the way they were. This makes memoir, by definition, a form in which reality and imagination blur into a “fourth genre.” The problems of...