SOME MORE GOOD BOOKS--MOSTLY TRAGIC MEMOIRS

I have found in the past few years that I'm less and less interested in reading fiction. I'll get partway through a book I would have found fascinating ten years ago and just can't keep going. Or I'll hear or read about a book that sounds good but as soon as I realize that it's a work of fiction I think, "Why bother? It didn't really happen." Apparently this change in reading taste is common as people (gulp) age. In compensation, though, I've become more and more interested in memoirs, but they have to be a certain kind. They have to have a compelling narrative voice and they have to be devoid of self-pity and narcissism. (So those requirements pretty much eliminate Julie and Julia, although I loved the film.) Gretchen Rubin says that she found memoirs of catastrophes helpful in building gratitude for her own life; the following titles all have something tragic in them. I've put some titles from Rubin's list on hold at the library and am looking forward to reading them but realized that I'd already read a fair number of this type of book. Here are some favorites from the past couple of years or so:

Together on Top of the World: The Remarkable Story of the First Couple to Climb the Fabled Seven Summits by Phil and Susan Ershler with Robin Simon, Grand Central Publishing: 2007.

This is much more than a mountain-climbing book. It's a love story, told alternately by each spouse. Phil Ershler has battled since high school with Crohn's disease and then developed colon cancer and had to deal with that before he and Susan could climb Everest. What I found so touching and amazing about this book was the total trust and respect that Phil and Susan display for each other.

What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship and Love by Carole Radziwill, Scribner: 2005.

Carole DiFalco married Anthony Radziwill, Jackie Kennedy's nephew, and became friends with John and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. Three weeks before Anthony died of cancer, John and Carolyn crashed into the Atlantic. Carole was born in a small town and gives us very much of an outsider's view of the Kennedys; the book would be worth reading for that characteristic alone. But she's also written unflinchingly about what it's like to experience an ongoing tragedy that is unstoppably racing towards death and then, on top of that, to have another tragedy land out of the blue.

In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing by Bob and Lee Woodruff, Random House: 2007.

This is another book co-written by a husband and wife. Bob Woodruff is the reporter who was injured so terribly by a roadside bomb in Iraq; he was kept in a medically-induced coma for 36 days and had to have part of his skull replaced with metal plates. Meanwhile his wife, Lee, coped with his situation and with the care of their four children. Quite a story. There is apparently a new edition out with updates.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Knopf: 2005.

This book generated substantial buzz when it came out. I didn't read it at the time and can't remember why I eventually did as I thought of Didion as being some sort of radical feminist left-winger, and perhaps she is. Whatever her political leanings, however, it has to be said that this book is pretty astonishing. Like the Radziwill book, it's also concerned with an ongoing tragedy and a sudden one: Joan and her husband, John, were dealing with the potentially fatal illness of their only child (Quintana Roo--isn't that quite a name?) and were eating dinner in their apartment after having come back from visiting QR in the ICU when John collapsed with a massive heart attack and died right there in the living room. Didion is achingly clear in her portrayal of so-called "magical thinking": the idea we have, even though we know it's false, that we can somehow undo the past if we do or say the right things. It is a deeply affecting and courageous book.

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken, Little, Brown and Company: 2008.

I know I picked this up from the new-book shelves at the library because of the weird title. It turned out to be a memoir of McCracken's having a stillborn baby. Would it sound just as weird as the title if I said that parts of it are wildly funny, even in the midst of the calamity? You'll just have to read it. (But I will give one example: McCracken and her husband are living in France at the time of the stillbirth, but they don't speak French very well at all, so when they are asked, "Would you like to speak to a nun?" they misunderstand and think they are being asked, "Would you like to speak to a dwarf?") I know I said that Joan Didion's book is "astonishing." Now I have to say the same thing about this one. I don't know how you write something that is so honest and so devoid of any self-pity and that still conveys the depths of grief and despair over the loss of someone you've never even met.

George and Sam: Two Boys, One Family, and Autism by Charlotte Moore, St. Martin's Press: 2006.

Well, another astonishing book. Moore tells about her life as a single mother with three sons, two of them severely, and agonizingly, autistic. Her husband leaves because he can't deal with the situation. She lives in the house where she grew up, a huge, tumbledown farmhouse in the English countryside. She deals with the unbelievable complications of life with her sons, meanwhile carrying on as a journalist. As with almost all books these days, you can read at least parts of this one online. Read the Prologue, and you'll never feel sorry for yourself again.

Every Mother Is a Daughter: The Never-Ending Quest for Success, Inner Peace, and a Really Clean Kitchen (Recipes and Knitting Patterns Included) by Perri Klass and Sheila Solomon Klass, Ballantine Books: 2006.

Perri and Sheila are mother and daughter, and this book is a delight. After you've read it you should then track down all of Perri's non-fiction books (she writes about med school, the medical profession, and knitting), avoid her fiction (not worth the paper it's printed on, in my opinion), and see if you can find any of Sheila's (Everybody in this House Makes Babies is her memoir of living in the Caribbean with her husband at the time Perri was born; you'll have to find it on a used-book site). The two of them together are a hoot. I was extremely tickled to see that Sheila, at age 82, is on MySpace. Although this book is by no means a "tragic memoir," the death of Morton Klass, Sheila's husband and Perri's father, is explored, as are the difficulties in Sheila's life as she ages.

Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story by Isabel Gillies, Scribners: 2009.

Well! Another one of those books whose title grabbed me. It was obvious to me that the book had to be about a failed-marriage/wife-is-always-the-last-to-know situation, and indeed it is. But Gillies is so disarmingly naive and charming (and, dare I say it, clueless) that you have to like her. And she's absolutely gorgeous into the bargain, so it's either reassuring or unnerving to know that she could get dumped. Warning to the squeamish: you might want to skip her description of childbirth. I was completely hooked, pulled along by her energy and honesty.