Not one but two Guardian articles today – the first posing the (humorously expressed) question of who reads so-called ‘misery memoirs’, and why? and another story detailing the life of somebody who has just produced one such memoir.
I don’t know if it is mere coincidence that these stories appear together on the Guardian’s website, but it is interesting to have them so neatly accessible to read back to back.
Without specific reference to the story of Cynthia Owen, I do share Lucy Mangan’s curiosity about such books. Who does read misery memoirs, and for what reason? Of course there will be a ‘specialist’ therapeutic appeal from those who have a shared history of abuse or mistreatment, but for popular readers the books are surely no better than detective novels which glamorise violence and crime.
I’m torn between viewing such books as offering interesting insights into lives from which I may learn something about humanity or human nature, or seeing them as mildly exploitative or pruriently voyeuristic in some way. Certainly that the current trend or glut of such books being considered hot property by publishers and booksellers is something I find distasteful.
It’s a difficult issue, because I’m by no means advocating that people with traumatic or abusive experiences shouldn’t be entitled to express or share or talk about those experiences in whatever form feels appropriate for them – for too long there has been too much secret history in our society, of abuses being covered up and denied or kept quiet, and I do not agree that such experiences must be quashed or silenced. But at the same time any sharing of such material must feel OK and appropriate and useful to the person concerned; I imagine the therapeutic experience of putting years of unhappy personal history onto paper, or otherwise expressing it, must have a massive impact on a person.
I suppose my queasiness comes when such books are being written for the benefit or interest of readers rather than because they serve a purpose for the writers. I don’t doubt that Owen’s story is a genuine expression of horrific experiences, especially in light of her need for reassurances from son and husband that they wouldn’t ever read it. But do I want to rush to buy it, as this summer’s must-have beach book for lazy afternoons in the sun? Absolutely not.
Will you be buying/reading it? If so, I’d be fascinated to understand why.
www.wayforwardcounselling.co.uk
Filed under: Current events Tagged: | abuse, biography, childhood, counselling, Cynthia Owen, families, health, literature, Living with Evil, media, misery memoir, novels, parents, psychotherapy, society, therapy, trauma, wellbeing, writing
