Tag Archives: memoir

Memoir Analysis #5: Harrison Scott Key

Leave a reply

http://www.amazon.com/How-Stay-Married-Insane-Story/

“Harrison Scott Key, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, tells the shocking, “shot through with sharp humor” (The Washington Post), spiritually profound story of his journey through hell and back when infidelity threatens his marriage.” Amazon.com summary.

Harrison Scott Key delivers another comic-tragedy and this is the most revealing of all. Another heart-wrenching memoir that addresses all the pain of betrayal and the struggle to survive.

Here are a few quick observations:

  • “Do I really care about three hundred pages on some stranger’s marriage? It turns out I did … There is an energy to HOW TO STAY MARRIED that I haven’t previously experienced in a memoir … Shot through with sharp humor” Jane Smiley, The Washington Post
  • Approximately 90k words spread over 38 chapters … just when you think it’s over, the pain and love and pain and forgiveness start all over again
  • “I read Harrison Scott Key’s hilarious, raw, bracing, profound memoir and have been recommending it to everyone I know. Read it! I’ve never read anything else quite like it.” Eleanor Barkhorn, The Atlantic

Key’s memoir of infidelity and forgiveness are presented in a realistic, painful yet hopeful way … and I speak with some experience on this topic. Yes, there’s some “god talk” included but not as much as you might think. Or, in other words, you’re likely to enjoy this book regardless of your faith or no faith perspective.

This book is definitely worth reading at least once. I’ve read it three times so far and find more humor and wisdom with each read.

One more memoir analysis to come within the next week. Please let me know if you have any questions on this or previous analyses offered.

To healing,

Patrick Cole

Memoir Analysis #4: Sloane Crosley

Leave a reply

http://www.amazon.com/Grief-People-Sloane-Crosley

“A best book of 2024 “, GRIEF IS FOR PEOPLE by Sloane Crosley is the fourth book and author selected for memoir analysis. It’s a heart-wrenching memoir that addresses the theft of family jewelry AND even more devastating, loss of a best friend to suicide.

Here are a few quick observations:

  • “Is it wrong to say that a memoir about loss and grieving is fun to read? If so, I’m in trouble, because I enjoyed every word of this book. I also ached and suffered along with Sloane Crosley: Her portrait of mourning after the suicide of her best friend is gutting and deeply engaging.” Susan Orlean, author of The Orchard Thief,
  • It has approximately 57k words spread over 8 chapters.
  •  “Like Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking or Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, Grief Is for People takes us through the ordinary, awful, and never-quite-ending experience of loss. It also made me laugh very hard, many times. I can’t stop thinking about it.” — John Mulaney

Unlike the three books previously reviewed, Crosley’s book offers a poignant, gallows humor, tale of two emotional losses in 2019 which were further exacerbated by the pandemic that hit the world and her NYC lifestyle.

While all our worlds were severely disrupted by Covid 19, Crosley’s, foggy upside-down, world began some six months earlier and still defines her life five years later. Perhaps time does heal but not nearly as fast as we would hope. This book is definitely worth reading now and in the future.

More successful memoirs will be reviewed in the weeks to come.

Memoir Analysis #3: An American Childhood by Annie Dillard

Leave a reply

http://www.amazon.com/American-Childhood-Annie-Dillard

The third author and book selected for memoir analysis is the 1987 classic, An American Childhood by Annie Dillard. A literary gem, her memoir is very different from the first two I presented earlier this month. Here are a few quick observations:

  • “A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across the country, An American Childhood is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard’s poignant, vivid memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s and 60s.” Amazon summary,
  • It has approximately 70k words spread over 41 untitled chapters.
    • Note: at first, I was annoyed by the untitled chapters and then I realized that while each chapter was different, it also naturally flows from the previous one.
  •  And finally, “[An American Childhood] combines the child’s sense of wonder with the adult’s intelligence and is written in some of the finest prose that exists in contemporary America. It is a special sort of memoir that is entirely successful…This new book is [Annie Dillard’s] best, a joyous ode to her own happy childhood.” — Chicago Tribune

Unlike the first two books analyzed, Dillard’s book offers more nostalgia for bygone American culture and less humor than Bryson or Sedaris. That said, it is a wonderful read about a girl who loves to read and attempts to relive those written words in her own life.

Five more successful memoirs will be reviewed in the weeks to come. Please let me know what some of your favorite memoirs are.

Patrick Cole

Memoir Analysis #2: Bill Bryson

2 Replies

http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Thunderbolt-Kid-Memoir

One way to determine if a memoir is ready for publication is to compare it to others that have already been proven successful. Continuing to aim very high, the second author and book selected for analysis is the 2006 book The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson. Here are a few quick observations:

  • this New York Times Bestseller is a “mix of exquisite detail and inspired exaggeration (which) all add up to the Truth with a capital T that rhymes with G that stands for out-loud guffaws” as reported by Scott Simon for NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday,
  • it has approximately 81k words spread over 15 chapters, and
  • “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is steeped in … the sweet, simple pleasures of an all-American boyhood. Even the world-weariest of souls will be charmed.” Parade

While Bryson and Sedaris may be contemporaries in time and country, their memoirs are worlds apart and inspired by worlds that no longer exist.

Six more successful memoirs will be reviewed in the weeks to come. Please let me know what your thoughts are on memoirs in general and what makes them worth reading for you.

Slow but sure, Patrick Cole

Memoir Analysis #1 – David Sedaris

Leave a reply

http://www.amazon.com/David-Sedaris-Book-Set-Corduroy

My goal is to publish a memoir by this time next year: December 29, 2025. I wrote and edited a first draft this year so I’m publicly acknowledging that I need at least a year to complete this publishing goal. More drafts, more editing, more polishing are necessary before it will ever see a bookshelf.

One way to determine if my memoir is ready for publication is to compare it to others that have already been proven successful. Clearly, I’m aiming very high by selecting David Sedaris as one standard for comparison. Based on a recommendation, I chose his 2004 book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim for review. Here are a few observations for starters:

  • this #1 National Bestseller is “hilarious, elegant and …. Sedaris is a complete master of the form” as Chris Lehmann reported for Washington Post Book World,
  • it has approximately 77k words spread over 22 chapters, and
  • “Sedaris’s perennial themes are not simply played for self-deprecating laughs in this volume, but are made to yield a more Chekhovian brand of comedy” as reported by Michiko Kakutani for the New York Times.

I know, it’s audacious of me to compare my memoir to one of Sedaris’s many successes. But why not aim high?

I will be reviewing seven other successful memoirs in the weeks to come. In the meantime, please let me know what recommendations you have for writing a successful memoir.

Slow but sure, Patrick Cole