Writing with Rox WEEKLY—The best and worst Memoirs I read in the same week

I spend a lot of time looking for good memoirs. Aside form the micro-memoirs my students write week-after-week here at the Beach (which is likely why my standards are so high), I have a hard time finding anything I really like or have patience for. The same way I am increasingly intolerant of insipid produce that looks (and costs) like it should taste good, I am losing my patience for memoirs that promise but don't deliver. Now... I know what you're thinking... Or do I? Maybe you feel the same way. In any case,  there's no need to get me started on which memoirs and the myriad reasons I don't care for them, (but I'll bet you can guess which and why).


So here's how it happened: I came across two memoirs in the same week, the first of which I started at Too Cute's house and left behind (which says a lot about me since I never leave a good book behind), which he began reading and joked about not giving back. I must have been really desperate for a good memoir at the time (but what makes this day different than any others?) because I said, "no fucking way will you, bring it back! You can keep the Harpo Marx memoir, but bring this one back!" A travel memoir, I must have thought it had a good enough start, with a good enough premise, which it did now that I think of it. Sort of the way Eat, Pray, Love did, which was a much better book, but I still had issues with it. 

In the meantime the memoir I ordered on a whim from amazon, after googling "best (or maybe it was just "good" by then) memoirs 2013, 2014 + New Yorker + New York Times + Salon" showed up, so thankfully I could shoot up some fresh memoir while waiting for the stash I left at Too Cute's. 

I started House in the Sky, a travel memoir of an entirely different kind, that night and did not put it down for 4 days. One night I read 100 pages, unbeknownst to me until TCF woke up at 2 a.m. and said, "honey, are you still reading?" 

"Nope!" I said guiltily slamming the book shut, since I am always complaining to him that I don't get enough sleep. 

Well, the truth is, sleep didn't matter that week. Nothing did, in fact. Not my work, my kid, my boyfriend, yoga... nothing.  All that mattered was this alternative world where I was living alongside Amanda Lindhout and her boyfriend in Somalia in a dark, moldy, cockroachy room where we live because we have been kidnapped. Do I want to be in this world? Of course not. Is it disturbing and infuriating and deeply sad? Yes, it is. But we know how it ends. At least we think we do. But in the meantime, we are going to do whatever we can and survive whatever we have to in order go get free. 

So, why was this the best book I've read since Angela's Ashes, A General Theory of Love, and A New Earth? For one, it's well written, which means it takes it's time showing us every minute of her ordeal along with every person she encounters with such finite detail that you grow to love (or at least understand) all the players, the gravity of the political situation abroad, even when you don't want to. Because in each and every one of those characters and countries, we can't help but recognize a part of ourselves. 

Which is why we keep going until we get free.

There are other reasons I loved this memoir which I cannot put into words, which is why I am telling everyone to read it so I can understand. Part of me wonders if a trauma bond has been created between me and this book, much like the one created between between Amanda and her captors, much like that of anyone taken hostage is some form or another, and I have become overly dependent on my literary (albeit terrorizing) captor. We longed to be free, but couldn't bear it. 

Like a classic addict, instead of endure the let down and despair of ending the book—post-bookem depression—I immediately sought refuge in the first memoir, hoping it would ease the pain of being kicked out of the House in the Sky and back to the free world that I had to face. Sadly, once I returned to Nomad Woman, er... Female Nomad, I felt as though I'd been exiled to literary Siberia. Not that I have anything against females or nomads or any combination thereof; it's just that this book is one of the reasons (if not the reason) why memoirs get such a bad reputation about being a house of narcissism.  I realize anything I were to read following House in the Sky would fall short, but I would have settled for mediocre—anything to get me through the night. So please don't count on Female Nomad as your rebound memoir.

In the meantime, I begged Too Cute to read passages aloud and report to me frequently on exactly where he was in the book and what was happening so I could relive it over again. So I could temporarily go back, instead of grumbling about my booby prize memoir.

What does this memoir lack and why does it make me so mad? Especially since it's written by a famous children's author who abandoned her children to travel all over the world in order to write it? Honestly, it has a few good parts, good lands to get lost in, good people to meet. But the sad part is, I feel like I don't know any of them, let alone love them. And trust me: her characters are a lot more lovable than Amanda Lindhout's!

So there is my memoir cheer and jeer for the year. Oh dear! How queer, that I should rhyme in here! Steer clear!

Really, try not to be mad at me for speaking negatively about a memoir, when 99% of the time I say that everyone ought write her or his memoir if they are called to. And I do stand by that. In fact, I wish all of my students would hurry up and write their memoirs already so I can have something else good to read!

Write with me?

Your favorite memoir? Least favorite memoir?