Biography and memoir
Mayhem by Sigrid Rausing
Sigrid Rausing is the editor (and owner) of Granta. Her grandfather built the Tetrapak global packaging empire. An heir to the resulting fortune, Rausing’s first memory is the smell and alienation of being driven in a chauffeured car, aged…
How to Fall in Love with Anyone by Mandy Len Catron
A couple of years ago, an essay was published in the New York Times under the undeniably compelling headline, ‘To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This’. It outlined 36 questions supposed to spark intimacy between two strangers. The questions…
The Museum of Words by Georgia Blain
I hadn’t read Georgia Blain until her last novel, Between a Wolf and a Dog, published early last year. Immediately I regretted not having read her work sooner, as it was clear from the first page that here was…
Baby Lost by Hannah Robert
During her second night in the ICU, after an accident that ended the life of her unborn baby, law lecturer Hannah Robert writes in her journal: ‘I dreamt that the sun was rising as the pieces of a shipwreck floated…
Thirty Days by Mark Raphael Baker
Older readers (like me) might remember Mark Raphael Baker’s critically acclaimed, deeply moving family memoir, The Fiftieth Gate, about the experiences of his Holocaust survivor parents. His second book, Thirty Days, is similarly infused with Jewish history and…
A Führer for a Father by Jim Davidson
The life of Jim Davidson – prize-winning historian, academic and former editor of Meanjin – warrants a biography of its own. However, Davidson is clear from the first pages that this book is not an autobiography, but rather an exploration…
Hunger by Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay is the smart, funny, outspoken author of the bestselling essay collection Bad Feminist and several acclaimed works of fiction. Her new book, Hunger, is a deeply personal memoir that examines how trauma can shape a person’s life…
The Mighty Franks by Michael Frank
I gobbled up this deliciously dark, profoundly poignant memoir in two half-days. The Mighty Franks is Hollywood gothic, complete with distorted families, claustrophobic passions, silver-screen glamour (sometimes borrowed, sometimes earned), submerged hurt erupting from poison tongues, and confected narratives. At…
No Way! Okay, Fine. by Brodie Lancaster
Brodie Lancaster’s first book is a memoir that fuses Lancaster’s love of pop culture and feminism to explore her quest for authentic identity and self-acceptance – even if the taboo of being an ‘adult One Direction-fan’ hasn’t exactly been broken…
The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs
‘I’m hoping that writing my way through this new suspicious country will help me figure it all out,’ says Nina Riggs, after she finds out that her breast cancer has spread throughout her body.
In this book, she shares how…
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