Marilyn Kriete's Blog

What a catchy title! I saw this book on a client’s bookshelf and wondered what a spirited  kid might think if he saw this on his mother’s bedside table: Yikes! I’ve gone too far! I’m being replaced!

As a parent who raised a strong-willed child, I also sense the miracle  promised by this title: All our troubles solved within a week.

Hopefully, Have a New Kid by Friday has helped many families, but I doubt it truly delivers on its audacious promise. How could it? Most parent/child conflicts defy easy, overnight—or even one-week– solutions. No two family situations are exactly alike. But isn’t it tempting to buy a book that claims a sure-fire solution to our hardest problems?

My parents owned a lot of books, but only one parenting tome: Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care. I used to sneak into my parent’s bedroom and read sections–especially the chapters on puberty, just so I’d know what was coming– and perhaps it gave me a glimpse into that generation’s attitudes towards children. For better or worse, my mother consulted Dr. Spock at every stage. And in spite of its humdrum title, Baby and Child Care was a massive bestseller.

Today’s parents have thousands of titles to choose from, which must make choosing harder. But I’ll bet many an exasperated parent has thrown Have a New Kid by Friday into their cart without even glancing at the contents.

It’s a great title. Punchy, arresting, promising.  As a writer, I know it’s hard to come up with memorable, attention-grabbing titles, and some authors—or their editors—seem better at it than others.

The title that gave me chills as a child was another from my parents’ bookshelf: Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. Once I overcame my initial fright, I tried several times to read it, but never got past the first few chapters. I vaguely remember a protagonist named Philip with a leg or foot infirmity—lameness? A club foot? My elementary school principal had a club foot, and apart from his oversized, bulbous shoe, he didn’t appear to be in bondage. (Not that I understood what bondage fully meant, but he seemed fine, if a little grumpy.) I decided Of Human Bondage didn’t deliver on its promising title, and moved on.

Paradise Road was the fourth or fifth title I came up with for my first memoir. It seems a good title, though I wouldn’t call it brilliant. ‘Paradise’ fits with the place and circumstances described in the final chapters of my story, and there’s a lot of ‘Road’ as I recount my bicycling odysseys. My work-in-progress titles—Runaway, The Girl Who Loved Too Much, Silky Green Parachute, DIY for the Newly-Bereaved– waxed and waned as I wrote, and I landed on my final pick almost by default.

My second, yet-to-be-published memoir is called The Box Must be Empty, which automatically felt like the right title. I’m struggling to come up with any title for my third memoir, about living in Bombay, and haven’t even attempted to title my current work in progress, about years spent in Africa. Unfortunately, Out of Africa has already been taken, or I’d use it.

So many memoirs have arresting titles:  The Glass Castle, The Year of Magical Thinking, A Girl Named Zippy, My Stroke of Insight, Running with Scissors, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Let’s Pretend this Never Happened, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The Center Cannot Hold, Autobiography of a Face, Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven. For me, most of these delivered on their great titles.

What are some of your favorite book titles? If you’re a writer, can you relate to the struggle of choosing a great title? Have you ever bought a book just for the title alone?

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I’ve gotten addicted to hanging out on Goodreads (an online book review site) and reading  reviews. It’s fun to pick a controversial book—like American Dirt, or Thirteen Reasons Why—and see what readers think. Sometimes, after reading all the comments, I’ll rush out to find a particular book, or cross it off my list.

Reading memoir reviews is enlightening, and a little scary. My own debut memoir was just published, and is ready for public scrutiny. They say authors need thick skin, but I think memoirists need the thickest skin of all. After all, readers aren’t just judging your concept, your writing, or your ability to keep them entertained. They’re evaluating YOU. The choices you made, the people you hung out with, the attitudes you carried, and the person you are. If you put yourself out there, warts and all, you need to brace yourself.

Many Goodreads memoir reviewers acknowledge this. “I know I shouldn’t sit in judgement on this person’s life, but…” Or, “It’s hard to separate the story from the person telling it….”  Or simply, “I stopped reading because the writer came across as whiny/entitled/out-of-touch/bitter/arrogant”…et cetera. Ouch.

Reviewers notice things. They call out memoir writers for being too explicit, or for withholding important information. For telling stories that feel one-sided, and for airing other people’s laundry. For repeating the same stupid life mistakes over and over. For living a life that’s unrelatable, or for dwelling on the mundane. For being essentially the same person at the end of the memoir as you were at the beginning. For being too complacent, too wild, too navel-gazing, too critical, or too oblivious. For making religious or moral choices the reader disagrees with. For exaggerating one’s misery, or behaving like a victim. For having different ways of  coping with challenges than they have. For sharing parts of ourselves that the world usually hides. For believing our story deserves to be a book.

And that’s on TOP of being judged as a writer. When the review stars are awarded—or withheld—how does the memoirist evaluate her score? Is she being graded on writing a compelling memoir, or on how she behaved? Can a well-written memoir overcome an unlikeable or unrelatable protagonist—herself?

I applaud anyone bold enough to publish a memoir, but here are my caveats.

Unless your story is truly remarkable, you need to be a very accomplished writer to pull off a great memoir. Honesty and deep emotions and personal drama are not enough.

Don’t write your memoir till you’ve really processed your story—in real life. Waiting ten or twenty years to reflect on your past can really pay off in wisdom and perspective. I waited nearly 40 years to write mine. Practice other writing first. Learn the craft.

Read LOTS and LOTS of memoirs to see what’s out there, and how your story compares. And read lots memoir reviews on Goodreads; you’ll quickly learn what readers enjoy, and what makes them throw books across the room.

And if, in the process, you get addicted to reading reviews…I’ll meet you over at Goodreads!

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What a tough question! Like most things in life, ‘favorites’ are often rooted to specific moments in our lives, and our top picks can change. As a child, I adored Mary Poppins, Alice in Wonderland, Anne of Green Gables, and Little Women, and reread them many times. They ‘read’ differently through my adult eyes, but they still hold up—some more than others.

As for favorite memoirs, choosing one is a bit like naming your favorite food: can you pick only one? Depends what we’re in the mood for, right? Do we want a wild adventure, a reckoning with trauma, a peek into the life of a celebrity? Do we want to be inspired, transported, reassured, amazed, shocked, entertained, befriended, or guided? Memoirs can offer all these things, and great memoirs give us a bit of everything, or at least an assortment of flavors.

As for book agents, I know what they favor: celebrity memoirs. Celebrity sells! Even if a celebrity memoir is ghostwritten/poorly written/not-altogether-forthcoming, agents know the cover pics alone will sell the contents. But celebrity can be fleeting. I still come across donated memoirs  written by forgotten contestants from American Idol, and wonder if anyone still reads them.

Two celebrity memoirs immediately come to mind when I think about my favorites. I read WHAT FALLS AWAY, by Mia Farrow, many years ago, and reread it years later with equal pleasure. Ms. Farrow is an eloquent writer who’s lived a remarkable life, surrounded by ‘celebrity’ from birth, yet humble and far from vapid. Her adoption stories were what attracted me to her memoir—I’ve adopted two kids, while she adopted TEN, and had four biological children—but I was captivated by her whole story. The quality of her writing has stayed with me, and I’m sure it’s one I could read again: the acid test of an excellent book!

The second is Michelle Obama’s BECOMING. I’ll bet many readers fell a bit in love with Michelle through her memoir, as I did. Her story is inspirational from start to finish—and it’s not over yet. I’m thankful she shared her remarkable journey with the world. I loved seeing Obama through her loving, yet non-idolizing, eyes.  And she’s a great writer. Unlike other ‘political’ memoirs I’ve read (or struggled through), none of her chapters was in danger of losing my full interest.

What about you? Do you have any favorite celebrity memoirs you’d like to recommend? Are you drawn to celebrity memoirs, or are you wary of being disappointed? Have you reread any memoirs lately? Please share!

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Last week I wrote a list of all the memoirs I can remember reading. Since I’m a library girl more than a book buyer, and I don’t keep a record of books I’ve read, I know my list is very incomplete. But the titles I recall must be the ones most worth remembering. I’m sure more titles will come to mind as we share and discuss in this group.

So far I have over 100 titles.

These titles represent many—but probably not all—of the types of memoir on offer. There are hostage tales like Stolen Lives and A House in the Sky. Travel memoirs like A Walk in the Woods, Wild, and Eat, Pray, Love. Dysfunctional family tales like The Glass Castle, Educated, and Running with Scissors. Grief memoirs like The Year of Magical Thinking and A Grief Observed.

Some memoirs explore regional and social issues, like Hillbilly Elegy and Nomadland. Others explore mental health and brain disorders, like Look Me in the Eye and Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness. There are scores of memoirs about losing or finding faith, like Surprised by Joy or The Cloister Walk,  or growing up in in weird religious groups, like Jesusland. Some memoirs about these topics get turned into movies: Girl, Interrupted, Prozac Nation, and Boy Erased, for example.

There are memoirs built around personal experiments, like The Year of Living Biblically and Know-It-All. Memoirs about place—Notes from a Small Island—and places with strange characters: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. There are animal memoirs (Marley and Me, and James Herriot’s books about life as a country vet), occupation memoirs (Maid, Teacher Man), and illness memoirs (When Breath Becomes Air, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).

The best-selling memoirs are usually those written (or ghost written) by celebrities.  If you’re a major/controversial/influential/hilarious celebrity willing to bare it all (or at least pretend to), you’re sure to find an eager publisher and a rapt audience. I have fewer celebrity memoirs on my list, but a few stand out: Michelle Obama’s Becoming, and Mia Farrow’s What Falls Away.

Finally, there are creative nonfiction books that aren’t exactly memoirs, because they explore other people’s lives, but share the same up-close intensity you find in a great memoir. I’m thinking of Jon Krakauer’s books, like Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, both made into riveting movies.

The wonderful thing about memoirs is getting to live inside someone else’s head for a while, doing things you might never want, dare, or be able to do in your own lifetime. You can do this through novels, too, but it’s not quite the same. I love knowing the adventure I’m experiencing in a memoir actually happened, and I get not only a front row seat, but a peek inside the memoirist’s mind as her story unfolds.

What are your favorite kinds of memoirs? What are your least favorite? Can you think of other types I haven’t mentioned? (I’m sure I missed a few.)

Thanks for jumping in!

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Just so we know what we’re talking about, let’s define this literary genre. I looked up several definitions, but this one from Wiki says it best:

A memoir is any nonfiction narrative writing based in the author’s personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobiography since the late 20th century, the genre is differentiated in form, presenting a narrowed focus. A biography or autobiography tells the story “of a life”, while a memoir often tells the story of a particular event or time, such as touchstone moments and turning points…

Allow me to clarify some terms.

“Nonfiction” means the story is true, not made up. This eliminates stories based on the author’s life, but altered to concoct a more exciting story. ”A Million Little Pieces”, by James Frey, comes to mind. I discovered Frey’s book long before he got exposed for fact-changing, but have to admit it was a wild, irresistible tale—even though I immediately questioned whether his dentist really drilled his teeth without ANY anesthetic. Other so-called memoirs have been exposed as completely made up, but fortunately, this is the rare exception, not the rule.

“Narrative writing” means it tells a story. The best memoirs have a beginning, middle, and end—a story arc—just like a novel. Memoirists use all the tools of storytelling (except making things up) to make their personal stories lively and accessible. However, they may pay more attention to how the main character (him/herself) was feeling—or how she looks back on those events years later–than you’ll find in many novels. 

The “touchstone moments” in a memoir’s storyline are key to a strong memoir, and the best memoirs have a theme (or several) that ties the events together. When I wrote Paradise Road, there were countless less-related stories I could have included—but didn’t. My readers don’t need or want to know all the details of my childhood, and I only included episodes that relate to my journey in seeking love, meaning, and connection—the main theme of my memoir. Therefore, my brothers barely get a mention, even though they obviously were a big part of my childhood. I didn’t get into school life, family camping trips, my extended family etc., because these aspects weren’t pertinent to the story I wanted to tell.

Some well-intended but less skillful memoirs fall into the “autobiography” category because their authors don’t have a defined theme, and they try to tell everything. Another danger is falling into too much other detail, such as recounting long conversations that don’t really add to the story, or going overboard on descriptions when a few choice words or sentences will do.

Other memoirs fall flat because they’re written too soon, before the author has finished processing the trauma or events being related. The best memoirs carry a strong sense of reflection and perspective, a revealing of the writer’s thoughts/attitudes then and now.

Some told-too-soon memoirs flounder in unresolved bitterness and blame, leaving a bad taste in the reader’s mouth. As readers, we want to see how the person portrayed in the memoir has grown and changed through her experiences, not reach the last chapter and realize she hasn’t really evolved or reached a deeper understanding.

I hope this is helpful. What about you? What elements make your favorite memoirs stand out? Have you read any memoirs that seem scattered, unfocused, or unresolved? (No need to name titles here, please!) What do you look for in choosing a memoir?

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