Thomas Mann was a favourite author of my great German Canadian friend Thea, so I decided to read this biographical portrait of the Nobel Prize-winning author by Toibin, the magnificent Irish writer. Mann’s life, separate from his writing, is fascinating, evolving from a German nationalist in WWI to become an internationalist and anti-Nazi figure. Conflicted relationships abound within his troubled family and within his homeland. Overall, an epic story of a complex man.
Category: Memoir
Permanent Astonishment – Tomson Highway
Highway is a fine novelist (Kiss of the Fur Queen) but this is a memoir, subtitled “Growing up Cree in the land of snow and sky”. Born in 1951, he grows up in remote Indigenous communities in NW Manitoba. The Indian Act declared that status Indian children MUST be sent to residential schools, so at age 6, he is flown to Guy Hill Indian Residential School in The Pas. Over the next 9 years, he describes academic challenges to learn English, but he does NOT experience institutional cultural genocide and has only a brief experience with sexual abuse at age 11. Overall, his residential school experience is positive even for a two-spirit individual, so an important perspective.
Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted – Suleika Jaouad
At age 22, Suleika is diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. What follows are three years of brutal treatments: extensive chemotherapy, an experimental clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant. The second half of this honest and insightful book details her “survival”, the transition back to the real world. Her coping strategy is to undertake a 15,000-mile road trip to visit those who sustained her when she was very ill. Cancer forces people to face mortality, and emotions are complicated and often conflicted because suffering makes you selfish. Suleika has to imagine a future that includes anger and fear; her writing is brutally honest and courageous. Thanks Sarah, for this recommendation.
Run Towards the Danger – Sarah Polley
Ms. Polley is a wonderful actor, screenwriter, and director, so it is not surprising that she has written this impressive collection of essays. Her stories are intensely personal and achingly candid, describing some terrifying situations. She also addresses the fallibility of memory, and the mutability of memory/reality because the person you are now is not who you were then. This is a powerful and moving book, invoking both laughter and tears: a must read.
The Road From Coorain – Jill Ker Conway
This is a clear-eyed memoir of growing up in Australia (1935-75) with two exquisite points-of-view. The first is her evocative description of the physical geography of an 18,000-acre sheep station, 500 miles west of Sydney. The bush ethos, the virtue of loneliness and hardship, is a marked feature of her early life, along with the profound isolation (no other children as playmates).The second point-of-view comes after the death of her father and her relocation with her mother to Sydney, where she is introduced to rigid class structures and the minimal role of women in education. This is a masterpiece of place and memory.
We Have Always Been Here – Samra Habib
A Canada Reads (now postponed) contender: This is a very well-written and powerful memoir about identity and belonging, but more specifically about the cost of hiding your identity, initially as a member of a minority and persecuted Ahmadi Muslim sect in Pakistan. Then as a new immigrant in Canada, she is subject to racism and bullying. Finally, there is also the poignant issue of her being a queer Muslim, yet another secret identity. Highly recommended.
Educated – Tara Westover
This is a remarkable memoir where reality is stranger than fiction. The author was raised in the mountains of Utah. Her parents were survivalists and totally suspicious of government so she had no birth certificate and does not go to school. To say that she was home-schooled is rather generous; her learning is self-directed and spotty. Tara is the youngest of 5 children. Her life is complicated by a controlling father and a brother who bullies her both psychologically and physically. The second half of the book details her escape to university, first to Brigham Young University and then to Cambridge England. This is a compelling story of remarkable resilience but at great cost. The contradictions of memory are also a feature of a memoir that is so deeply emotional. Final comment: Westover’s parents make the parents in Jeanette Wall’s The Glass Castle seem wonderful by comparison! Thanks Erin and Amy, for this recommendation.
The Diary of a Bookseller – Shawn Bythell
After buying a bookshop in the southwest corner of Scotland in 2001, the author/owner keeps a one-year diary of the bookshop activities in 2014. He is an often grumpy and irascible commentator on: his rotating staff and their idiosyncrasies, his customers, and the precarious state of independent second-hand bookshops. And his pet peeve, the Amazon juggernaut. There is lots about buying books from estates. Throughly entertaining.
Daughter of Family G – Ami McKay
Simply put, this is an amazing book. Ms. McKay is an excellent novelist (The Birth House, The Virgin Cure, Witches of New York). Her new book is a memoir with a unique context. Her great-great-aunt, Pauline Gross, confided to a pathology professor in 1895 that she expected to die young because she had observed a very strong family history of cancer. This statement led to a cancer genealogy study that ultimately resulted in the discovery of a gene mutation that creates a devastating cancer susceptibility, now known as Lynch Syndrome. Part of the book imagines the lives of Pauline and sister Tillie, the direct ancestor of Ms. McKay. Along this history, there are some dedicated physician-scientists but the ugly reality of eugenics is part of this quest. Much of the book is deeply personal since Ms. McKay also has the Lynch Syndrome mutation. What thought process informs the decision to undergo genetic screening? How does one live with this knowledge, with implications for your children (there is a 50% risk of transmitting the mutation)? And finally, there is Ami’s deeply moving and loving relationship with her mother so this is also a memoir of love and fate, tremendous family resilience, the link between the genes we inherit and the life we choose. This is a fantastic read.
What David Read 