In our new memoirs and autobiographies section, we keep track of some of the new books coming out by Five Books interviewees and frequently recommended authors.
Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir
by Matthew Perry
Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir (2022) is by Matthew Perry, the Canadian-American actor who played Chandler in Friends. Unlike many celebrity memoirs, Perry had no ghostwriter, and reading it is a bit like hearing a funny friend telling you about the hell he's going through. It may be a bit garbled at times, but you don't mind because you want to hear what he's saying. To say the book is sobering is an understatement: Perry really tries to convey what it's like living with an addiction and why it's so hard to get out of. He talks of millions of dollars—and half his life—spent in rehab. And knowledge, sadly, is not power. As he writes in the prologue, "By this point, I knew more about drug addiction and alcoholism than any of the coaches and most of the doctors I encountered at these facilities. Unfortunately, such self-knowledge avails you nothing."
I've Been Thinking
by Daniel Dennett
Philosopher Daniel Dennett describes himself as a pack rat or a magpie - picking up ideas and facts that might be useful from a wide range of sources. His memoir reflects that. He has made connections with researchers in many fields, particularly evolutionary theory, neuroscience and computing and his distinctive philosophical career reflects that. He’s best known as a philosopher of consciousness, a defender of a compatibilism about free will, and as an uncompromising atheist. But the book describes his wide interests (which include music, sculpture, farming, and sailing), and includes some great anecdotes as well as a bit of score-settling with philosophers he has disagreed with over the years.
“The Scottish novelist and screenwriter John Niven—perhaps best known for cult favourite, Kill Your Friends—has just released a searingly honest account of his fraught relationship with his charismatic younger brother Gary, who took his own life in 2010. Their lives began in tandem and then diverged; while John made his way in the music business, and later as a writer, Gary worked manual jobs and dealt drugs in the small town they grew up in. But what might have been a grim story of descent, recrimination, and despair is, in Niven’s hands, a moving and even exuberant story that reflects the chaotic energy of their brother and the dark humour that he and his sister Linda forge from an otherwise harrowing situation.” Read more...
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
“Kate Zambreno is a true writers’ writer; her books are always being recommended to me by other authors. Her latest, The Light Room, is billed as ‘a candid chronicle of life as a mother of two young daughters in a moment of profound uncertainty.’ The life of the mind finds intellectual trapdoors that can relieve the tedium.” Read more...
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
“The celebrity memoir that jumps out is Elliott Page’s Pageboy, which charts—among other things—his Hollywood career, coming out as gay, then his later gender transition. Page might be the most famous trans man in the world right now, and his thoughtful, non-linear account of confronting and later making public his identity is not only a glimpse into the Tinseltown lifestyle but a valuable addition to trans literature.” Read more...
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
“The late, great Janet Malcolm’s final book, Still Pictures, was released posthumously at the start of this year. It’s a memoir in essays, inspired by a collection of black and white photographs of her Czech refugee family found in a box (labelled ‘old not good photos’) in her attic.” Read more...
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
“Bard professor and New Yorker writer Hua Hsu’s Stay True centres upon the death of a Berkeley classmate in a bungled armed robbery. The Pulitzer judges declared it an ‘elegant and poignant coming of age account that considers intense, youthful friendships but also random violence that can suddenly and permanently alter the presumed logic of our personal narratives.'” Read more...
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
Doro: Refugee, Hero, Champion, Survivor
Doro Ģoumãňęh and Brendan Woodhouse
"This is Doro and he is beautiful" is the opening line of Doro: Refugee, Hero, Champion, Survivor. It's the story of Doro Ģoumãňęh, a Gambian fisherman, who lost sight in one eye, some of his teeth, and experienced unbelievable horrors trying to get to Europe. The co-author is Brendan Woodhouse, a British firefighter who was one of the volunteers that rescued Doro on the Mediterranean, as part of a charity called Sea-Watch. It's hard not to cry reading this book. It's one of 2023's must-read books, and the must-read book if you live in Europe and care about other human beings.
This is a book about Doro and Brendan and it is beautiful.
“Peter Brown, the historian often credited with creating the field of ‘late antiquity’, has a memoir out, Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History. Born in 1935 in Ireland, this is a snapshot of growing up in the last days of the British Empire (his father worked in Sudan) and what it was like as an Irish Protestant in the UK, as well as a lot of details on Brown’s intellectual formation and influences. The memoir is nearly 700 pages but Brown is a beautiful writer, and he has nice, wry observations about all sorts of things. If you know someone who enjoys intellectual memoirs, this is a rather lovely one.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Early Summer 2023
Sophie Roell, Journalist
Code Gray: Death, Life, and Uncertainty in the ER
by Farzon Nahvi and narrated by Aden Hakimi
“This book kicks off in the time of COVID. You’ve got all these doctors not knowing what is going on. They’re from all over the country and they’re texting each other on this text chain. What struck me about this book is how well-written it is. It drops us into the fact that there are things which are broken in the American healthcare system. The doctor does a nice job of taking us through what’s happening, but also his career and his insider take on healthcare, which is really fascinating. It’s incredibly disheartening, but he is able to talk about mistakes that he has made and how important communication is with the patient. He really makes you feel something for the doctor within the system because, oftentimes, when you’re receiving healthcare, you’re just feeling frustration. It’s slow, no one is telling you what is going on. To get the doctor perspective was fantastic.” Read more...
Best Audiobooks of 2023 (so far)
Michele Cobb, Publisher
“This is a story of growing up in rural Wales. The impact of the closure of coal mines and deindustrialization in Wales has been profound and has left many towns and villages in a state of limbo. The industry that shaped their communities is no longer there—without a really definable new industry coming along. It’s a very specific experience and Angela captures it beautifully. Her parents own a takeaway. They’re one of many Chinese families dotted around the country who run takeaways. Several of her uncles are also running takeaways. Having a Chinese takeaway in rural Wales is a genre of experience all of its own. It’s inimitable. The book captures a lived experience, a slice of history. It feels like an important story that’s been told, and she’s told it very well. It’s a very moment-in-time book. It’s rooted in time and place and is very evocative of that time and place.” Read more...
The Best Food Books: The 2023 Fortnum & Mason Food And Drink Awards
Clare Finney, Cooks & Food Writer
“When I began writing—and planting—there was nothing but the newly sown grass and deep layers of rubble and waste in the garden. This barrenness and resistance of this ground expressed the grief I felt far more closely than a beautiful and pristine garden would have done. Even so, I wanted to see what could grow. It was a need really: to balance the repeated experience of loss with the persistence of life. I found that, with each plant that grew, I healed a little of that broken ground, both within myself and in the garden. In doing so, I discovered that it was the very imperfectness of the ground and the resilience of the wildflowers that made that growth possible…In this slow growing, the garden became a conversation, which is echoed in the structure of the book. It became a memoir in itself: recording memories of discovery, of time passing, childhood disappearing, my own ageing body, and the losses that I grieved.” Read more...
Victoria Bennett, Memoirist
Constructing A Nervous System: A Memoir
by Margo Jefferson
🏆 Winner of the 2023 Rathbones Folio Prize
Margo Jefferson combines criticism and memoir in Constructing a Nervous System. This mirrors what Jefferson said when we interviewed her several years ago "I realised that I needed, in some way, to merge and to keep those two forms in dialogue, interrogating – as we like to say – each other. So, I began to think of cultural memoir." Margo Jefferson on cultural memoirs.
Victory. Stand! Raising My Fist for Justice
Tommie Smith, Derrick Barnes, Dawud Anyabwile (illustrator)
🏆 Winner 2023 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults
This is a powerful graphic memoir, propelled by the great combination of a compelling story and dynamic illustrations by an award-winning artist. At the 1968 Olympics, Tommie Smith — having just broken the 200 metre sprint world record — and bronze medal winner John Carlos, raised their fists in an iconic gesture against the injustice inflicted on African Americans. This graphic novel tells the story of that race and the incredible determination it took to win, with flashbacks to Tommie Smith’s childhood. The Olympic medallists’ decision to use their platform to take a stand had severe consequences (including death threats) and still resonates today.
Finding Me: A Memoir
by Viola Davis
🏆 Winner of the 2023 Grammy for Best Audiobook, Narration, and Storytelling
🏆 Winner of the 2023 Audie Awards Audiobook of the Year
In Finding Me, Viola Davis shares her struggles with poverty, abuse, and racism, as well as her triumphs and the lessons she has learned on her journey to becoming a celebrated actor.
“A Stranger in Your Own City by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is a beautiful book which tells that story from the point of view of a local resident, an architect, who later ended up working for foreign media, first as a fixer and then as a photographer and writer. The book opens with a chapter on “My First War”—about the Iran-Iraq war, talks about the years of sanctions, and then goes through everything that happened from 2003 up to the present. I couldn’t put it down. It’s like having a friend telling you what they lived through and finally being able to understand what happened and why things went so wrong.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Early 2023
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“This is about a family that is divided. One sister spends most of her life in Taiwan and the other spends most of her life on the mainland. It’s a very personal story. It’s a memoir and family history, driven by the author’s interest in figuring out the things that the family didn’t talk about. There’s a bit of the historian-as-detective in this book, as she tries to work out what was going on when her aunts were young…The women in the story are special and they’re not just passive agents. But there is a high degree of luck, which is something that also figures in this. The author herself, in some ways, was lucky. She benefited from having a relative who could help her get connected to the outside world, even though at an earlier point, you would have said, ‘How unfortunate to have a family whose members were disconnected that way.’ That captures something important about China and the China story.” Read more...
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Historian
“It is a devastating story. It’s a memoir of her marriage and the death of her husband by assisted suicide. Listening to the audio version embodies why author memoirs are so popular and so powerful as audiobooks. You hear her telling this story. It’s an intensely personal story. She’s a professional in the way that she holds herself together as she tells this story, but as the listener, you hear—she can’t help but have in her voice—the emotion and the many feelings that she had as she went through this incredible experience with her husband.” Read more...
Robin Whitten, Journalist
Spare
by Prince Harry the Duke of Sussex
Spare by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, has sent the British media into a frenzy. It's a revealing book, including everything from how Harry lost his virginity to how he killed 25 people in Afghanistan. As one of the BBC correspondents commented, to say this is a tell-all book would seem to be an understatement. Above all, what is revealed is a very angry man—perhaps not surprising for someone who lost his mother at age 12 as she was being chased by photographers and has had to grow up in the public eye as part of an extremely privileged but also very formal family. The title of Harry's memoir is from the phrase 'an heir and a spare.' For British aristocratic families, with the inheritance of vast tracts of land and property at stake, the idea was that you needed two sons, an heir and a spare, just in case the eldest one died. According to Harry's book, it's also what Prince Charles, now King Charles III, said to his wife Diana when Harry was born.
The Raven's Nest: An Icelandic Journey Through Light and Darkness
by Sarah Thomas
Sarah Thomas's debut memoir, set in a remote, starkly beautiful region of Iceland, is moving meditation on landscape and identity.
“Instead of telling the story from the viewpoint of an enlightened paragon of recovery—which would have made it fiction, anyway—I decided to do something I hadn’t seen in addiction memoir: fashion an unreliable, often ignorant, sometimes even deranged narrator, who seems to have no idea how much he’s betraying his hypocrisies and self-deceptions. (Towards the end of the project, I read Ditlevsen and—although slightly disappointed to discover I hadn’t been as innovative as I thought—the success of her experiment encouraged me to think I was on the right track.) Then there’s my book’s ending and its ambivalent relationship with redemption—which I won’t say any more about, in case anyone’s interested enough to read it and find out what I mean, but which I think makes it a little different from other addiction memoirs. Although I don’t mind if the book’s called an addiction memoir, in the course of writing it I came to think that wasn’t quite right. I drew as much on another tradition: memoirs about loss of faith…In fact, drugs are absent from most of the book’s action, which is about my sometimes difficult childhood as the son of an evangelical preacher, growing up (or failing to), the catastrophe of losing my faith in my teens—and then my desperate search for salvation elsewhere. Drugs were just the most destructive of the several wrong places I looked; others were literature and women, or the fantasies I projected onto them.” Read more...
Matt Rowland Hill, Memoirist
The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
by Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama's new book, The Light We Carry, is part self help and part memoir. It reflects a trend in celebrity memoirs where personal life stories are told partly to give advice to others who might be facing similar challenges—and we are certainly all living in "uncertain times." The publisher has revealed little about the book, but if her previous memoir, Becoming, is anything to go by, The Light We Carry will hopefully be insightful, engagingly written and funny. As with Becoming, Obama has narrated the audiobook herself.
“Also important to be aware of is what’s going on in China’s Xinjiang province. No Escape by Nury Turkel is the memoir of a Uyghur (now American) human rights lawyer and tells the story through his eyes.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Spring 2022
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“Act Like You Got Some Sense is a guide to parenting, told through stories that impart lessons Foxx learned about parenting, often by failing as a parent. I would especially recommend this book to mothers, who in my experience hold themselves to (or are held to) much higher standards than fathers. They know it’s impossible to be perfect, yet they still always feel like they’re failing. The main message of this book is that you’re inevitably going to fail, but it’s okay: the most important thing you can do as a parent is show up and be present. If you do that, your children will ultimately forgive your screw-ups. Foxx takes a jokey approach.” Read more...
The Best New Celebrity Memoirs
Sharon Marcus, Literary Scholar
“Many of the short chapters are addressed to Strong’s young cousin, Owen, who dies of brain cancer just as COVID starts spreading in New York City…This Will All Be Over Soon is a short book by a highly emotional person who often provides a blow-by-blow account of her feelings. Strong describes having a lot of anxiety and depression which make it difficult for her to get perspective on her emotions.” Read more...
The Best New Celebrity Memoirs
Sharon Marcus, Literary Scholar
“Reading This Much Is True is like hanging out with an aunt who’s had a little too much to drink and is letting it all hang out. I thought it was fantastic. At one point, she says, apropos of nothing, ‘I’ve always felt that smoked salmon was an essential ingredient of any social occasion. But it must, like a woman, be moist.'” Read more...
The Best New Celebrity Memoirs
Sharon Marcus, Literary Scholar
“Burke is the activist and community organizer who coined the phrase ‘Me Too’ while working with Black women and girls to heal from sexual assault. Her book tells the story of how she came to the key insight of that work: you can’t empathize with others unless you empathize with yourself. “ Read more...
The Best New Celebrity Memoirs
Sharon Marcus, Literary Scholar
“What I liked most about Will was Smith’s self-awareness and self-analysis. He’s very upfront about how his emotional limitations motivated him to become a celebrity. He foregrounds his growth and change as a person, even recounting some of his therapy sessions. He shares insights about what made him a celebrity and kept him a celebrity.” Read more...
The Best New Celebrity Memoirs
Sharon Marcus, Literary Scholar
“***WINNER of the 2021 National Book Critics Circle award for the best autobiography*** It has a real freshness to it. She talks about being Asian American in a way we haven’t quite heard before. She digs into the personal to get to her political points, and that keeps it really lively. She is so honest and clear, and not afraid to be self-deprecating. There’s plenty of autobiography in the mix here, so I was really glad it made it to our final five” Read more...
The Best Memoirs: The 2021 NBCC Autobiography Shortlist
Marion Winik, Journalist
Heavy Light: A Journey Through Madness, Mania and Healing
by Horatio Clare
Memoirist and bestselling travel writer Horatio Clare tells his story of what it was like to go mad, in what looks to be a heartbreaking, funny and invaluable look at what it's like to live with manic depression.
The Soul of a Woman
by Isabel Allende
A new memoir (she's already written a couple) from Chilean literary legend Isabel Allende. Now close to 80, she remains exuberant about life and a staunch feminist. Isabel Allende's father was the cousin of Salvador Allende, the Chilean president who was overthrown in the military coup of 1973 that brought Augusto Pinochet to power. It would turn into one of the bloodiest episodes in political history, and Allende herself ended up in exile in Venezuela. But it was there that she started writing her first and probably still most famous book, The House of Spirits.
Thin Places
by Kerri ní Dochartaigh
The Irish writer Kerri ní Dochartaigh's debut work of memoir is a deeply moving account of a traumatic childhood in a Northern Ireland riven by sectarian violence—and the sanctuary she found in the natural world.
Acid for the Children: A Memoir
by Flea
Nominated for the 2021 Grammy Awards, Acid for the Children, written and read by Flea, the bassist for the band Red Hot Chili Peppers, is hard-earned wisdom from a sweet soul. Flea might have flamed out as tragically like as many of his Los Angeles rock world contemporaries if not for reading. Throughout, Flea recounts the importance of books in his life in keeping him grounded and balanced.
