5 Memoirs That Will Blow Your Mind

Using diary entries, flashbacks and short selections from other writers, Shapiro examines her 18-year marriage to M. A former war correspondent, M. has struggled to survive as a filmmaker—a career change that Shapiro begged him to make, fearing for his safety. Now, she feels both guilty and grateful, worried about the toll this choice has taken on her husband, especially as her own career thrives. Shapiro’s examination of marital decisions like this one—loaded with long-term consequences—is what makes this memoir so intimate, so wise and, at times, so devastating. She tells their story in collage, touching on decluttering efforts, past health scares with their son, fears about finances, and even battles with an intensely destructive woodpecker. Trying to figure out how she and M. have arrived at this point in their lives—a point of both happiness and regret—Shapiro realizes, “Change even one moment, and the whole thing unravels. The narrative thread ... spools and unspools, loops around and returns again and again to the same spot.” A meditative masterpiece.

As a young woman, Amy Liptrot seeks to escape her rough, rural childhood in the nightlife of London, only to find her depression, drug use and drinking magnified by the hard-living city. After losing her flat, her job and her lover, she enters rehab for a third time. Once released, she returns home to the remote Orkney Islands off Scotland, “washed back, like the inevitable tide.” Weaving in Orkney myths about the Merry Dancers (translation: northern lights), hillyans (mythical hill folk) and haar (sea fog), Liptrot examines the farm labor and mental illness that so influenced her early life. She reunites with her family and resumes a life lived in overalls and work gloves, raising lambs, repairing drystone walls and combing beaches with “wellies full of sea water and rotting whale slime.” A sprawling, lush tale. Full of heart and honesty.

Source: huffingtonpost