The best memoirs have the appeal of a night out with a dazzling raconteur. Good storytellers have natural editing skills: they understand that there is an arc to a narrative – foundation, tension, payoff – and they leave out the details that don’t serve it. Not everyone can pull this off, of course. Unlike its fraternal twin the autobiography, a memoir is supposed to focus on a season of life, not a chronological life review. This narrow focus can result in some awkward oversharing.
Years ago, my book club read A Round-heeled Woman by Jane Juska. It had an intriguing premise: a seventy-year-old woman placed a personal ad and wrote about her late life sexual escapades. At a certain point, though, the author began revealing cringe-worthy thoughts about how these experiences boosted her physical self-confidence. In one memorable scene, she strutted around her living room, half-naked under a bulky sweater, and admired her body in a full-length mirror. What was meant as a reflection on empowerment came across as painful vanity.
So does it follow that memoirists should hold back a bit on the private revelations? I’m not sure it’s that simple. In Kiese Laymon’s Heavy there is a moment when the author makes a surprisingly effective overshare. While in a friend’s kitchen, he takes a swig of blue cheese dressing from the bottle. Although my reaction was discomfort, it was an effective choice that underscored the chronic poverty he was facing at the time.
In a slightly different category is Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women. It is neither memoir nor autobiography but instead a nonfiction narrative. The author interviewed three subjects – Maggie, Lina, and Sloane – and proffers a detached ethnography of the women’s romantic lives. While the individual stories are interesting, the author’s clinical distance sets a strange tone. Her idiosyncratic style also left me cold. (Sample sentence: So he took a position as a courier at a hospital, hallwaying around interdepartmental mail, manila envelopes with red string.) In the end it felt like a proxy overshare. I wonder what the three subjects think of it.
Books Smitten 