It’s been awhile since my last reading update. And I’m still devouring memoir like donuts fresh out of the fryer.
I just finished journalist Prachi Gupta’s They Called Us Exceptional, and while I found the POV jarring (it’s told as though to Gupta’s mother), the story of being othered as an immigrant, the tension of mental illness in a demanding father, unreliable sibling and subservient mother, is compelling.
Two other memoirs blew me away with their vivid, immediate, funny and honest prose: Strong Female Character by Fern Brady, about a Scottish woman discovering her own autism after years of blindly muddling through life, not knowing why she was (is) as she is (was).
And Leg, by Greg Marshall. He’s devastatingly honest and compassionate about his own physical limitations and his vibrant family and ultimate losses. Hashtag-writing-goals for this writer.
I also want to mention Joan Wickersham’s The Suicide Index, incisively and delicately written within what could be a hokey framework, but manages to iteratively tell of a father’s suicide and a family’s unraveling.
I also had the wonderful experience of reading 3 novels quickly, fast because I adored Jen Beagin’s writing, but with the dread of finishing such wonderfully-written prose: Pretend I’m Dead, Big Swiss (a sex therapist’s transcriptionist falls in love with a client) and Vacuum in the Dark.
That’s it for now. I’ve got 6 more books going on Libby. Happy reading!
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