Remembering the Memoir

The passing of Frank McCourt, the 78-year-old author of the wildly successful Angela's Ashes, made me think about the memoir — specifically, what good memoirs I have read.

I will give McCourt his props. His memoir was grand, sweeping and one of the most heart-wrenching books I had read to date. It broke my heart to read about children experiencing such abject poverty, hunger, cold and disillusionment. I watched the movie with Carole the first weekend of its release, and neither of us was a terribly happy camper when we left the theater that night.

Carole and I have reviewed a number of memoirs in our blog, and some of them are worth mentioning (and recommending).

• If I am Missing or Dead by Janine Latus. A thoughtful and harrowing story of the author's younger sister — but even more so, the story of the author herself. The book jacket starts the story with the disappearance of the younger sister, but the author wisely begins the story at the right place: at her own beginning.

• The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. For those of us who did not experience it, parental neglect seems unfathomable. Try cranking it up a notch or 12 with Walls' book. I borrowed Carole's copy, tabs and all, and I was floored at the conditions under which these parents kept the children. The author begins her tale with an anecdote: seeing her mother living as a streetperson in Manhattan. Most authors wouldn't know where to go from there. Walls takes us to the right memories, weaving a story of sadness and disappointment that lingers.
  

• I Dreamed of Africa by Kuki Gallmann. Africa takes center stage in this memoir of a European woman who escapes to Africa after tragedies in her life. For her, Africa is home and we experience her life in a very visceral way. I cried more than once as I read her tales of hardship and sadness, loss and despair. It was one of the most beautifully written books I had ever read.

• How I Lost Five Pounds in Six Years by Tom Arnold. I laughed, I cried. It was a sweet, honest and rare story. The persona Arnold presents to his audience as an actor or a TV writer is much different than the love story he writes to his future children. I laughed at his self-deprecating humor. I appreciated the difference between a joke at his expense and being a joke — and never was he the latter. I loved this book so much I purchased a copy to use as a reference guide when I wrote my own memoir. (I will, however, leave out the meat processing plant job in mine.)

• Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen. It's the story of a hiker who gets lost on his way down from trying to climb Mt. Everest and winds up in a tiny village whose inhabitants tend him back to health. In return, he promises to build them a school. Only he doesn't stop at one school for one village. I mentioned this book to my friend Wayne before his deployment to Afghanistan; he lamented the dove-ish approach of education, reminding me the true responsibility of the military. On his first R&R six months later, he commented that his humanitarian efforts made more difference by far than his military might. I think Greg would have agreed.

What are some memoirs you have enjoyed — or not?

The Glass Castle — Review by Carole

Jeanette Walls’ memoir evokes many emotions, not the least of which is anger. Anger at her parents for the way they treated and raised their children; anger at the extended family for their lack of intervention; and anger at a society that managed to always turn a blind eye to a situation that could not have been easy to ignore.

Oddly, though, Walls doesn’t write with anger. Her love for her parents resonates throughout the book. She credits them with giving her a love for literature and art, for being resilient, and for being able to take care of herself.

In The Glass Castle, Jeanette, her sisters, and her brother grow up in a truly extraordinary way. And I use the word extraordinary deliberately. The book starts off describing one of Walls’ earliest memories—boiling a hot dog at the age of 3 and having her dress catch on fire. You know right then and there that her childhood memories are going to be quite different from my own.

I daresay that they are probably quite different even from someone who had a stereotypical bad childhood, such as coming from a broken home or living with an abusive parent. In Walls’ story, the family is very much intact—they are simply quite insanely dysfunctional.

As I mentioned in my I Dreamed of Africa review, memoirs are revealing for what they tell us, but also for what they omit. For instance, although she writes this as a look-how-well-we-turned-out-despite-our-horrific-upbringing story, you get the sense that the younger sister has truly been lost in all of this. She didn't have the strength of the group to draw from as Jeanette, her brother, and her other sister did. Also, her older sister did not seem to give this book her blessing--even though her mother seemed to be okay with it!

This book made me realize how much we take for granted--to always be fed and warm as a child. (Thank you, Mom and Dad!) It reminded me of Angela's Ashes in that way. Their upbringing has to have had unbelievable lasting effects on each of those children. I noticed that Jeanette and her sister do not have children and the brother just has a daughter.

After reading the book and imagining all of the times that those children unnecessarily went hungry, a quote from the grown brother comes back to me. He says, “You know, it’s not that hard to put food on the table, if that’s what you set your mind to do.”

I was enthralled by this book from the very beginning. I was going to re-read this for one of my book clubs, and I found that I didn’t need to. The memories shared in the book haunt me still.

For more of Jeanette Walls' perspective on her childhood, check out this Gothamist interview.

I Dreamed of Africa — Review by Carole

I confess—I read I Dreamed of Africa thinking I wasn’t going to like it. It had a picture of Kim Basinger on the cover, and I don’t especially like her. It’s about Africa, and I usually find those stories so overwhelmingly depressing that I can’t stand to read them. So, this did not bode well for my reading experience. To counter all of that, though, I had Chris’ recommendation, who found the book so beautiful “I cannot bear to see [it] on celluloid.” Wow! That’s a pretty ringing endorsement. That plus the fact that Chris does not often steer me wrong outweighed my initial reservations. But I still went into it thinking that I wouldn’t like it.

With that said, I didn’t like the book, but not for the reasons listed above. I didn’t like Kuki Gallman’s memoir because I often became so angry at the narrator that I wanted to throw the book across the room (FYI — if you Google “throw the book across the room,” you’ll find that this is actually a fairly common description used by book bloggers to describe their purely visceral reaction to a book, often prompted by its ending.)

Kuki Gallman’s story begins in Italy, where, as a young woman, she dreams of Africa. I grant you that she does have a compelling writing style and her imagery throughout the memoir is beautiful. But like any memoir, she only shares the parts of her life that she chooses. I always find myself wondering about the stories not told. I had the same experience reading The Glass Castle, which I’ll be writing about later in the week.

Back to Kuki’s story: when her life’s journey does, in fact, take her to Africa, she knows she is home. But before she gets there, she suffers a horrific accident that leaves her nearly crippled. Amazingly enough, a wonderful surgeon eventually is able to literally set her straight again.

When she suffers this accident, she has a very young son. Her recovery from the accident requires an 8-month stay in the hospital. During this time, her son stays with Kuki’s mother. When she gets out of the hospital, she and her new husband move with her son to Africa. So, let me get this straight: She takes a little boy, whom she has been away from since he’s had much long-term memory and moves him somewhere he has never been. Sure, why not?

In this early instance, she struck me as a selfish person who acts first and thinks of consequences later. This is reinforced throughout the book, and annoyingly enough, she often points out that she had great foreboding at certain times, but she, except for one instance, doesn’t listen to that voice in her head. Of course, she is writing about these events after the fact, so perhaps ascribing certain feelings of dread adds to the drama.

I don’t mean to disparage the tragedies she suffered. I felt her sense of loss keenly throughout the book, and in fact, it is through her loss that she sets her life on the path she pursues to this day. What I also felt throughout the book is that she was quite spoiled, used to getting her own way, rich enough to pursue whatever path she felt like following, and self-absorbed. I told myself to keep in mind the time period in which the book is set. Kuki was essentially a hippie determined to find herself. In her efforts to find herself, however, it is amazing what and who she lost along the way. I was repeatedly struck by the great carelessness with which she lived her life.

She writes quite poignantly about those around her and the tragedies they’ve suffered and endured. She uses this as a context for the harsh life they live in Africa. But it struck me that they should then value life even higher, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. She writes about life-threatening situations that her children find themselves in and what all of those events meant, but all I could do is ask, “Where were you? Why didn’t you know these things were going on in your children’s lives?”

The noble path that she ultimately takes is to establish the Gallman African Conservancy/Gallman Memorial Foundation. She does this in memory of those she’s lost. Throughout the book, she writes that she feels that she has to earn the right to live where she does. So why didn’t she pursue this sooner? Where was her passion for this cause before? She had the same connections, same abilities, but it takes tragedy in her life before she actually stops and looks around and pays attention to more than herself.

I give her a great deal of credit for putting her life story out there. It is remarkable for many things, but I just couldn’t get over the fact that, if I were to meet her, I wouldn’t like her. Isn’t that awful? I’m probably not supposed to feel that way about someone who is devoting her life to such a worthwhile cause. I’d really like to hear how wrong I am on this one—someone set me straight.

If I am Missing or Dead - Review by Chris

Memoirs are under great scrutiny by readers, and they should be. Memoirs are not fiction. Now, recounting a conversation from 20 years ago may require a certain amount of backfill, and I do not begrudge an additional “What do you mean?” in re-created dialogue.

However, when writers make up criminal records, life experiences and characters, as did Jonathan Frey in A Million Little Pieces, they must admit to writing fiction.

If I Am Missing or Dead: A Sister's Story of Love, Murder, and Liberation is not fiction. Janine Latus has written a chilling memoir that is brutally honest about herself and her family. It hearkens to another unsentimental and unrelenting recent memoir, The Glass Castle.

The description on the dust jacket of If I am Missing or Dead is gripping: Amy, Latus’ youngest sister, fears for her life while in a romantic relationship. When Amy goes missing, and a few days later is found dead, her boyfriend is charged with murder.

Although the dust jacket begins there, the author instead begins his memoir with her birth as the twin who survives. What she survives as she grows up, however, are insidious horrors. At nearly every step of the way, she finds danger with even the safest of people. Alcoholic, abusive, abandoning, suspicious — and those are the keepers with whom she builds her life.

Please do not mistake this for The Bastard Out of Carolina or Jude the Obscure, novels so dark and foreboding I wept as I read them (and in the case of the former, refused to read beyond page 70). Latus treads softly and masterfully. As the horrifying facts of her tale unfold, her telling of them is amazingly honest and revealing.

Latus takes readers out of their personal safety zones with clear, precise, startlingly crisp language and honest self-revelations. These revelations are acts of bravery. Readers can envision exactly what she describes, whether the gift from her husband is jewelry, vicious cruelty or a sound beating.

She does not retreat from telling the truth about her life and choices. Never judgmental, Latus observes her sister’s plight at the same time she reveals her own. Latus does not need to draw parallels, instead allowing readers to judge for themselves.

Amy, Latus and others in this memoir remain human. Even the “bad guys,” though cruel and abusive, are never vilified. She lets the story speak for itself, a rare gift in today’s writings.

With this book, Latus answered a question I harbored for years: what prompts a woman with whom I can identify to stay in a situation I would like to think I would not tolerate? The author is educated, financially self-supporting and independent — all qualities I identify with self-sufficiency and autonomy, and qualities I like to think I share. Even Amy, in her final days, remained smart and level-headed, leaving behind enough evidence to help her searchers and defenders in case of her demise. So how can women similar to me wind up there?

It's a lot of things, Latus proves. It's not understanding that someone does not have the right to treat another in that way. It's cumulative: throw a creature into a pot of boiling water, the creature will fight for her life — but place her in a pot of slowly heating water and she will allow herself to boil to death. It's believing the lies because you believe in the liar. It's a pinch of shame and a dash of self-loathing. It's different for everyone but painful for all.

This was a very good book with a humbling story. I recommend it — and I hope it will start people thinking and talking.