Recommendations for "Throat Grabbing" Memoirs
October 31, 2021 4:28 PM Subscribe
I would love to get a recommendation for a memoir you've read in your life that had you panting for air. I am writing a memoir about psychotic illness, and I need to know how to "grab someone by the throat" with my narrative. I want to see an example of someone recounting their interior experiences in a way that had you relating because it was compelling.
You want The Center Cannot Hold. I still think about this book. An incredible memoir by a law professor with schizophrenia.
posted by sevensnowflakes at 5:06 PM on October 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by sevensnowflakes at 5:06 PM on October 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
I found Into Thin Air extremely gripping!
posted by Threeve at 5:08 PM on October 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Threeve at 5:08 PM on October 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
I immediately thought of I'm Thinking Of Ending Things, a suspenseful novel that I started listening to on audiobook but had to switch to the paper version because I couldn't handle how anxious I was!
posted by rogerroger at 5:13 PM on October 31, 2021
posted by rogerroger at 5:13 PM on October 31, 2021
I’m not sure it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but I couldn’t put down “Educated” by Tara Westover (and I’m not someone who reads a lot of memoirs or even nonfiction in general).
posted by Kriesa at 5:18 PM on October 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by Kriesa at 5:18 PM on October 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell is probably the most gripping memoir I've ever read. I would say it combines the interior with the exterior. Also, the way she structures it around parts of the body is very interesting and may give you some ideas.
posted by FencingGal at 5:50 PM on October 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by FencingGal at 5:50 PM on October 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
Mary Karr's The Liars' Club is brilliant and compelling. (It's included in the 2019 NY Times article "The 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years" that may be helpful.)
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:19 PM on October 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:19 PM on October 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
The memoir Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller is everything you describe.
The throat-grabbing opening lines:
Mum says, “Don’t come creeping into our room at night.”
They sleep with loaded guns beside them on the bedside rugs. She says, “Don’t startle us when we’re sleeping.”
“Why not?”
“We might shoot you.”
“Oh.”
“By mistake.”
“Okay.”
As it is, there seems a good enough chance of getting shot
on
purpose. “Okay, I won’t.”
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 6:51 PM on October 31, 2021
The throat-grabbing opening lines:
Mum says, “Don’t come creeping into our room at night.”
They sleep with loaded guns beside them on the bedside rugs. She says, “Don’t startle us when we’re sleeping.”
“Why not?”
“We might shoot you.”
“Oh.”
“By mistake.”
“Okay.”
As it is, there seems a good enough chance of getting shot
on
purpose. “Okay, I won’t.”
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 6:51 PM on October 31, 2021
Reading Lolita in Tehran has a passage that made me put the book down so I could breathe for a minute. It had to do with an uncle’s death and figuring out how to get him buried. Amazing book.
posted by SLC Mom at 8:02 PM on October 31, 2021
posted by SLC Mom at 8:02 PM on October 31, 2021
A very strong contender in this category is Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. See? Even the name grabs you!
It's written by a poet and playwright.
There's a whole chapter on euphemisms for getting drunk - and it works in the narrative.
posted by rw at 8:56 PM on October 31, 2021
It's written by a poet and playwright.
There's a whole chapter on euphemisms for getting drunk - and it works in the narrative.
posted by rw at 8:56 PM on October 31, 2021
Mary Karr also has two additional very strong entries in addition to The Liar's Club, namely Cherry, and Lit.
Also, she has a book based on her years of writing and teaching how to write memoir, The Art of Memoir which I can highly recommend. Mental illness and psychotic breaks abound in all three of her memoirs, but not usually hers.
(Edited slightly on preview)
posted by rw at 9:00 PM on October 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
Also, she has a book based on her years of writing and teaching how to write memoir, The Art of Memoir which I can highly recommend. Mental illness and psychotic breaks abound in all three of her memoirs, but not usually hers.
(Edited slightly on preview)
posted by rw at 9:00 PM on October 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
I think about Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking all the time. It is absolutely starkly, awfully compelling and heartbreaking.
posted by fairlynearlyready at 9:56 PM on October 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by fairlynearlyready at 9:56 PM on October 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
Brain on Fire, Educated, The Glass Castle
not a memoir but all time most gripping, complicated, excellent health writing, omg, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.
posted by athirstforsalt at 11:53 PM on October 31, 2021 [6 favorites]
not a memoir but all time most gripping, complicated, excellent health writing, omg, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.
posted by athirstforsalt at 11:53 PM on October 31, 2021 [6 favorites]
Lucy Grealy's 'Autobiography of a Face' is about physical illness,
Ann Patchett's 'Truth and Beauty' is about her friend Lucy Grealy's physical and mental illnesses.
They are both worth looking into.
posted by mdrew at 1:52 AM on November 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
Ann Patchett's 'Truth and Beauty' is about her friend Lucy Grealy's physical and mental illnesses.
They are both worth looking into.
posted by mdrew at 1:52 AM on November 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
Marya Hornbacher Wasted - about eating disorders. It has a gut-wrenching, poetic quality to it and is frankly, devastating.
posted by coffee_monster at 2:16 AM on November 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by coffee_monster at 2:16 AM on November 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
Darkness Visible by William Styron, the author of Soplie's Choice. He writes about his descent into depression.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:21 AM on November 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by SemiSalt at 5:21 AM on November 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado.
posted by nayantara at 6:09 AM on November 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by nayantara at 6:09 AM on November 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
Angelhead: MyBrother’s Descent into Madness
Would have read in one sitting if I had the time.
posted by blairsyprofane at 7:19 AM on November 1, 2021
Would have read in one sitting if I had the time.
posted by blairsyprofane at 7:19 AM on November 1, 2021
And Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder. The plot sounds like a bad reality show: Nervous literary geek starts exercising because he's scared in crime-ridden 80's Manhattan; a few years later he's lifting full-time in southern California and shooting as much steroids as his body can absorb. But it's really a thoughtful consideration of obsession and identity:
"The following is an account of my journey - what I did, what I saw, what I felt. Those in search of a steroid primer or an exercise manual are advised to look elsewhere; my purpose is different. Part ditty, part dirge, I sing of arms and the man, of weight rooms and muscle pits, of biceps and triceps, bench press and low pulley rows, of young and old, woman and man, straining and hoisting iron to the boom box sounds of Top 40 record stations in bodybuilding gyms across the land.
I sing of dreamers and addicts, rogues and visionaries. And I sing of my own solitary pilgrimage into this strange world. A world filled with wrist straps and ammonia, BIG Chewables and "the juice." A world governed by a savage force that swallowed me whole from a bookstore in New York City, and did not relent until it had chewed me up and spit me out 80 pounds heavier and 3,000 miles later on a posing dais in Burbank, California. I was swabbed in posing oil and competition color, flexing with all my might, when I came to, a sadder and wiser man."
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:52 PM on November 1, 2021
"The following is an account of my journey - what I did, what I saw, what I felt. Those in search of a steroid primer or an exercise manual are advised to look elsewhere; my purpose is different. Part ditty, part dirge, I sing of arms and the man, of weight rooms and muscle pits, of biceps and triceps, bench press and low pulley rows, of young and old, woman and man, straining and hoisting iron to the boom box sounds of Top 40 record stations in bodybuilding gyms across the land.
I sing of dreamers and addicts, rogues and visionaries. And I sing of my own solitary pilgrimage into this strange world. A world filled with wrist straps and ammonia, BIG Chewables and "the juice." A world governed by a savage force that swallowed me whole from a bookstore in New York City, and did not relent until it had chewed me up and spit me out 80 pounds heavier and 3,000 miles later on a posing dais in Burbank, California. I was swabbed in posing oil and competition color, flexing with all my might, when I came to, a sadder and wiser man."
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:52 PM on November 1, 2021
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posted by Orlop at 4:39 PM on October 31, 2021