Entries tagged with non-fiction: memoir

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"The Twilight Zone" by Nona Fernandez

Last night I finished The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernandez, book #9 from the "Women in Translation" rec list. This book was translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer.

The Twilight Zone is a nonfiction book, part memoir, part investigative journalism piece by Fernandez, first published in 2016. It concerns Fernandez's study of and memories of growing up under the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. The author is haunted by the traumas of the regime, both those she experienced firsthand and those she heard about from others, and the book in some ways feels like an exercise in simply trying to reconcile those feelings.

Fernandez's book is of course very specific to the Chilean experience, and yet core parts of her incisive commentary about both the absurdity and the cruelty of autocracies rings true around the world. The exercises the regime goes through in its constant quest for self-preservation are both ridiculous and brutal, feelings Fernandez captures in her title. The surrealist sci-fi hit show of the 70s fits very well as a metaphor for the often-flailing yet eminently dangerous police state.

Fernandez does an excellent job of using her prose to say things not neatly spelled out in words. I was reminded of reading The Things They Carried in high school, and how revelatory it seemed to me at the time how the author could use the style of prose to suggest a character's mental disarrangement without simply saying he was deranged. Fernandez's prose stood out to me in a similar way—how she uses the structure of her words to capture the feelings at play.

Equally compelling is the obviously copious amounts of research Fernandez put into her work. She portrays herself as a woman consumed by a quest to find answers about this regime, and it comes across in her work. Names, dates, places, timelines — Fernandez has clearly put in the leg work to piece together the final days of the highlighted victims of the regime as much as can be done.

However, the book never comes across like a textbook. Fernandez ably weaves her research into a compelling narrative. Neither does she ever seek to blur the line between the facts and her imagination—she keeps a clean line between what she knows and what she wonders, or imagines. Nevertheless, the questions and suppositions that populate Fernandez's mind feel regrettably natural for anyone in the aggravating circumstances of a mendacious autocracy. She does an excellent job of showing how crazy-making it is to live under such a government, where you are constantly being lied to in direct contradiction of visible facts, and yet there seems to be nothing you can do but either accept the truth or taste the knuckles of the regime.

I really enjoyed this read. It breezed by and I can absolutely see what a national treasure Fernandez is as a writer! I would love to see if more of her work has been translated into English; she has a wonderful voice.

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Wait For Me! by Deborah Devonshire

from amazon;

Deborah Devonshire is a natural writer with a knack for the telling phrase and for hitting the nail on the head. She tells the story of her upbringing, lovingly and wittily describing her parents (so memorably fictionalised by her sister Nancy); she talks candidly about her brother and sisters, and their politics (while not being at all political herself), finally setting the record straight.

Throughout the book she writes brilliantly about the country and her deep attachment to it and those who live and work in it. As Duchess of Devonshire, Debo played an active role in restoring and overseeing the day-to-day running of the family houses and gardens, and in developing commercial enterprises at Chatsworth. She tells poignantly of the deaths of three of her children, as well as her husband's battle with alcohol addiction.

deborah is the youngest of the mitford sisters, her sister jessica wrote about the family in hons & rebels that i posted about a while back. she writes about her childhood feeling far removed from the oldest 4 of her siblings because of the age difference.

her sister unity introducing her to hitler where she played interpreter at a tea in his apartment. and goes into what it was like after her sister's suicide attempt. jessica's husband didn't like the family and after their marriage they were separated by distance (they moved to the u.s.) as well as politics (they were communists). deborah talks about the speculation that pam was a lesbian, but says she didn't understand people's interest in that & it's no one's business

she married andrew cavendish, younger son of the 10th duke of devonshire, in 1941. his older brother william, who was married to JFK's sister kathleen, was killed in WW2 & left him heir to the title, as well as several houses. the most famous being chatsworth which she and her husband managed to save by the enhancement of the garden and the development of commercial activities such as chatsworth farm shop. she said they sell stuff grown or made from things produced on their property, other estates will have their "own label" but get the stuff from a factory that makes the same thing for 20 other places.

while looking at her wikipedia page, i discovered that she was the grandmother of stella tennant, the model who passed just before christmas 2020. stella had a bit of the midford sisters look, the mouth and a bit of the eyes & maybe chin. her height of 5 foot 11 inches reminded me that in jessica's book she said that unity was the tallest of the sisters and to use the term they use today "big boned".

Current Mood: curious

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Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford

from amazon;

Jessica Mitford, the great muckraking journalist, was part of a legendary English aristocratic family. Her sisters included Nancy, doyenne of the 1920s London smart set and a noted novelist and biographer; Diana, wife to the English fascist chief Sir Oswald Mosley; Unity, who fell head over in heels in love with Hitler; and Deborah, later the Duchess of Devonshire. Jessica swung left and moved to America, where she took part in the civil rights movement and wrote her classic exposé of the undertaking business, The American Way of Death.
Hons and Rebels is the hugely entertaining tale of Mitford's upbringing, which was, as she dryly remarks, “not exactly conventional. . . Debo spent silent hours in the chicken house learning to do an exact imitation of the look of pained concentration that comes over a hen's face when it is laying an egg. . . . Unity and I made up a complete language called Boudledidge, unintelligible to any but ourselves, in which we translated various dirty songs (for safe singing in front of the grown-ups).”
But Mitford found her family's world as smothering as it was singular and, determined to escape it, she eloped with Esmond Romilly, Churchill's nephew, to go fight in the Spanish Civil War. The ensuing scandal, in which a British destroyer was dispatched to recover the two truants, inspires some of Mitford's funniest, and most pointed, pages. A family portrait, a tale of youthful folly and high-spirited adventure, a study in social history, a love story, Hons and Rebels is a delightful contribution to the autobiographer's art.

jessica mitford was from an impoverished english aristocratic family, they were related to the churchills, that if they weren't an english aristocratic family would be considered insane. as it was, they were only considered eccentric. her mother must've been one of the original anti-vaxxers. she didn't trust doctors, insisting that "the good body" would heal itself.
the girls had little formal schooling, the only son was sent trough the typical course of schooling for an english aristocrat, eaton & such. it was amazing that 3 out of 6 girls wrote books, considering their lack of education.
most of the family had leanings towards fascism, or were full on fascists, most supported franco during the spanish civil war. the author, jessica, became a communist. unity became a nazi.

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Father of the Lost Boys

Father of the Lost Boys: A Memoir by Yout A. Alaak tells the story of Alaak's family during the Second Sudanese Civil War, as well as roughly twenty thousand 'Lost Boys' - boys mostly between the ages of 8 and 12, who had been sent to refugee camps unaccompanied.

Although some of the subject matter is dreadful, this is a beautifully written book that maintains a generally upbeat tone, and makes sure to talk of joy as well as sadness.

Also included is a brief history of South Sudan, which is one of the clearest summaries of several hundreds of years of history that I've seen in a long time.

Released by Fremantle Press in 2020

Content warnings for war related topics, child death.

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the princess diarist by carrie fisher

from amazon;

When Carrie Fisher discovered the journals she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved—plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naiveté, and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Before her passing, her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon was indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a teenager with an all-consuming crush on her costar, Harrison Ford.

With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher’s intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time—and what developed behind the scenes. Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and endlessly quotable, The Princess Diarist brims with the candor and introspection of a diary while offering shrewd insight into one of Hollywood's most beloved stars.

more kind & gentle than shockaholic, this book is mainly "i accidentally starred in one of the biggest movies of all time & (sort of) accidentally had an affair with my marred co-star.

and you'd think that the behind-the-scenes crew would want to stay close to home & have dinner with their families when they could. but no, most would rather be on location, getting on location Per diem & trying to hook-up with the locals.

it also goes into how weird it is to make personal appearances & sign stuff (which she called "lap dances") and was honest in saying she was doing it for the money.

R.I.P ms. fisher

Current Mood: blah
Current Location: sunday eveing
Current Music: closthes washer running

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wishful drinking & shockaholic by carrie fisher

description of wishful drinking:

Finally, after four hit novels, Carrie Fisher comes clean (well, sort of ) with the crazy truth that is her life in her first-ever memoir. In Wishful Drinking, adapted from her one-woman stage show, Fisher reveals what it was really like to grow up a product of 'Hollywood in-breeding,' come of age on the set of a little movie called Star Wars, and become a cultural icon and bestselling action figure at the age of nineteen.

Intimate, hilarious, and sobering, Wishful Drinking is Fisher, looking at her life as she best remembers it (what do you expect after electroshock therapy?). It's an incredible tale: the child of Hollywood royalty -- Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher -- homewrecked by Elizabeth Taylor, marrying (then divorcing, then dating) Paul Simon, having her likeness merchandized on everything from Princess Leia shampoo to PEZ dispensers, learning the father of her daughter forgot to tell her he was gay, and ultimately waking up one morning and finding a friend dead beside her in bed.

description of shockaholic:

This rollicking follow-up to Carrie Fisher's' New York Times bestselling memoir and Tony Award- and Emmy Award-nominated, one-woman Broadway show Wishful Drinking is packed with madcap memories from her star-studded life: her friendships with Michael Jackson and her once-upon-a-very-brief-time stepmother, Elizabeth Taylor; her dates (and brawls) with senators; and her love affair with electroconvulsive therapy. But it's also a tender chronicle of her rollercoaster relationship with her father, Eddie Fisher, whose unconventional approach to life -- to say nothing of parenting -- sometimes drove Carrie to the brink, but also taught her about the nature of family, and love.

Wishful Drinking is the better of the two. It's kind of hard to describe why.

Maybe because the first one is like Fisher saying "Here's my messed-up life & how it shaped me" and the second one is more like "You didn't get enough in the first book? Well, here's some of the crap I held back." Plus even more creative cursing than the first one.

The best part of Shockaholic, IMHO, is her verbal sparing with the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Who apparently was a major jackass. Especially when he drank.

Current Mood: accomplished

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Review: Close Encounters of the Third Grade Kind, Thoughts on Teacherhood, by Phillip Done

I'm extremely fond of what I think of as "job books" (memoirs that are based on the writer's professional experiences in a career, like a book by a veterinarian about his or her practice, or books about being a cop by a cop). I particularly like humorous stories and this book definitely fits the bill. Close Encounters of the Third Grade Kind is by a teacher about his experiences as a teacher, and I liked it a great deal. Done is a funny and engaging writer and his stories are the right combination of funny and heartwarming without being overly sweet or corny. (Memoirs balance out my passion for science fiction and fantasy novels.)

In this book, Phillip Done has adventures with accidentally admitting to being a teacher during a Back to School sale. (He is instantly mobbed by parents who have many, many questions they need him to answer Right Now.) He worries that cursive will go the way of the dinosaur. (He claims that he would be robbed of most of his exercise routine. Who knew that teaching cursive would require so much physical activity?) He also buys way too many things at a gift store in France for his student, hides from his students and their parents so he can get some work done and is harassed into spelling pig backwards.

Close Encounters of the Third Grade Kind

Current Mood: geeky
Current Location: early evening

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if you're looking for something to read

these are the non-fictions books that i like. your mileage may vary.

WARNING! possible spoilers in the descriptions

( the list here )

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Dum Pater Familias

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Book reviews: Doors Open; The Edible Woman; Extra Virgin

Title: Doors Open

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Title: The Edible Woman.

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Title: Extra Virgin: Among The Olive Groves of Liguria.

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