Fiction and memoir about reconstructing childhood
March 19, 2018 12:03 AM Subscribe
This was me. Help me find fiction to help me move forward.
In the past few months, I've gone to a lot of therapy and begun reconnecting with family from whom I was previously estranged. One particularly helpful thing has been occasionally connecting with other people who were similarly lied to about aspects of their childhood--for example, a cousin who was told their parent never wanted to see them when that parent didn't know they existed. I'd like to read more accounts of people with similar experiences. Can you recommend fiction and memoir along similar lines--where a child was told by a parent or caregiver (either deliberately or because of mental illness) that reality was one thing, when they learn later in life that this sequence of events was false?
In the past few months, I've gone to a lot of therapy and begun reconnecting with family from whom I was previously estranged. One particularly helpful thing has been occasionally connecting with other people who were similarly lied to about aspects of their childhood--for example, a cousin who was told their parent never wanted to see them when that parent didn't know they existed. I'd like to read more accounts of people with similar experiences. Can you recommend fiction and memoir along similar lines--where a child was told by a parent or caregiver (either deliberately or because of mental illness) that reality was one thing, when they learn later in life that this sequence of events was false?
Why Be Happy When you Could be Normal? - Jeanette Winterson.
All the best - I hope things work out for you.
posted by sedimentary_deer at 2:12 AM on March 19, 2018
All the best - I hope things work out for you.
posted by sedimentary_deer at 2:12 AM on March 19, 2018
On the fiction front, I immediately thought of a few particular books by Martha Grimes. She has written a series of mysteries of novel quality. There was a sequence of them in which her detective confronts his own past. His mother was killed in the London blitz, and he can't be sure which of his memories are true and which are wishful reconstructions. I think you would be looking at these three, in order:
The Blue Last
The Grave Maurice
The Winds of Change
The books are not about Jury's ruminations on his origins. They are mysteries about other things, but the themes of origin and memory are related in a novelistic way.
And where memory is concerned, there is always Proust, if you dare.
posted by SemiSalt at 11:47 AM on March 19, 2018
The Blue Last
The Grave Maurice
The Winds of Change
The books are not about Jury's ruminations on his origins. They are mysteries about other things, but the themes of origin and memory are related in a novelistic way.
And where memory is concerned, there is always Proust, if you dare.
posted by SemiSalt at 11:47 AM on March 19, 2018
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posted by flyingfork at 1:27 AM on March 19, 2018