Jennifer Joyner’s new book, Designated Fat Girl: A Memoir, is a brutally honest, intimate account of her 16-year struggle to control her relationship with food - a battle with a profound cost to Joyner, her husband, and her children. It’s a story of public and private anguish that will ring true to the countless women who live and struggle with obesity today. In the end, it is also a story of hope, recovery and survival.
I love journalism, diaries, and gossip, and am fascinated by The Lady’s appointment of author and writer Rachel Johnson as ninth editor of the title, so this book was tailor-made for me and I’m afraid I bounced in my chair in a most un-Ladylike fashion when I got my hands on a copy.
It didn’t disappoint. Johnson’s diary details her first months at the helm, in which she was charged with doubling the magazine’s circulation: her staffing problems, the difficulties in bringing in new readers without alienating long-term ones, and the criticisms she’s faced from one of the directors, Mrs Budworth, about her modernisation of the magazine. Along the way she is charmed by some of the traditions of her new office (two freshly laundered teatowels a day; free cake from PRs) and horrified by others (the hundreds of free holidays staff have been taking in return for gushing write-ups; rambling articles about cobnuts), but does slowly start to bring The Lady into the twenty-first century.
Fast-paced, funny, and somewhat frantic, it all makes for a thoroughly entertaining read.
Get it on Amazon (or somewhere else).
*Many thanks to Fig Tree for the review copy.
Here’s a site that gathers together what reviewers have said about books, film and theatre. The non-fiction section of the site is jam-packed, and includes recent memoirs like Sarah Silverman’s The Bedwetter. (Critical consensus: three stars out of five.)
What an excellent idea.
He would have been a difficult interview,” says Baksi, on the line from his home in Stockholm. “He didn’t want to be a pop star, so he wouldn’t have wanted to do interviews on a big television channel like CNN. He would have preferred to do interviews with small, leftist magazines.” Baksi, a writer and publisher in his own right, has recorded his impressions in Stieg Larsson, My Friend, an insightful memoir that focuses mainly on Larsson’s early career as a crusading journalist. “It was a kind of therapy for me,” says Baksi of his motivation for writing the book. “Also, if the situation was reversed and I had sold three books and died, then Stieg probably would have written a book about me.
—Memoir lets Stieg Larsson’s friend move on with life - thestar.com
The majority of the books I review are bought with my own money or borrowed from the library. Others are kindly sent to me by publishers. Regardless of where a book is from, I always give my honest opinion.
Of course, I am predisposed to like the books I get from publishers, not because they are free but because I only request books I think I will enjoy.
In the interests of full disclosure, however, I always state when a book is a review copy.
If you’re an author, publisher, or publicist and want to tell me about a memoir you think I might love, please email me.
Jaycee Dugard, who survived being kidnapped at age 11 and held captive for 18 years, is writing a memoir. Dugard’s book is scheduled to come out next year, Simon & Schuster announced Monday. Financial terms were not disclosed. According to the publisher, the 30-year-old Dugard will write the currently untitled book herself and cover her life from her abduction in 1991 to how she is doing now. “When I read the pages, I was moved and inspired by the raw power of Jaycee Dugard’s voice, her strength and her resilience,” Simon & Schuster publisher and executive vice president Jonathan Karp said of what she has written so far.
Pretty sure this will sell, but not sure I’ll be in a hurry to read it. You?
I’m delighted that Koren Zailckas agreed to sit down with me… (OK, sit down and email with me) for the launch of Memoir Armoire’s first (but not last!) author interview, in honour of her new book, Fury. In keeping with the bite-sized news and reviews theme, it’s short and sweet, but contains some great advice. Enjoy!
We’re all about keeping things short and sweet here at Memoir Armoire, so could you describe your latest book in five words?
Found anger first, then love.
What are some of your favourite memoirs?
Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time. Everything by Mary Karr. Nabokov’s Speak, Memory. Tobias Wolff’s In Pharoah’s Army. Michael Herr’s Dispatches. Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie. Richard Wright’s Black Boy.
What’s your top tip for aspiring memoir writers?
Live in denial. Write as though you will never have to show your manuscript to anyone—not a reader, not an editor, certainly not your family. Remember:
A list from Skirt! featuring one of my faves, Catherine Gildiner, who, incidentally has a new book out later this year (which I believe is a re-release of an out-of-print title), the sequel to Too Close to the Falls, called (of course) After the Falls.
I loved Koren Zailckas’ first memoir Smashed because it was not just well-written but inspiring in its rawness and the author’s willingness to admit to dark truths about herself. Plus, while some memoirs are accused of being navel-gazing (not that I mind that), this one could never be, as it lightly wove stats and sociology into the personal story, showing that Zailckas was not alone in her behaviour. Now Koren is sober, but her new book Fury (trailer above) is about the rage that was left when she kissed alcohol goodbye.
According the book’s blurb:
In the years following the publication of her landmark memoir Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, Koren Zailckas stays sober and relegates binge drinking to her past. But a psychological legacy of repression lingers—her sobriety is a loose surface layer atop a hard-packed, unacknowledged rage that wreaks havoc on Koren emotionally and professionally. When a failing relationship leads Koren back to her childhood home, she sinks into emotional crisis—writer’s block, depression, anxiety. Only when she begins to apply her research on a book about anger to the turmoil of her own life does she learn what denial has cost her. The result is a blisteringly honest chronicle of the consequences of anger displaced and the balm of anger discovered.
Fury is out now, and we’ll have more from Koren soon (like, Thursday soon), so keep your eye peeled.
I had no idea Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees (which I just loved) had written a memoir with her daughter, but she has. Last week it came out in paperback with a new cover, and according to Sue on her website:
Traveling with Pomegranates has often been described by readers as a memoir about change. Certainly, in its pages, Ann and I are each in the throes of tumultuous transitions: Ann is a young woman leaving college with no idea of what to do with her life, while I am turning 50, headed toward older womanhood with no idea of what to do with my life either.
Sounds like a lot of mums and daughters will relate.
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