Biography & Autobiography: Literary

Brave, explosive, and thought-provoking, this is a powerful memoir. 'It's material, make a story out of it,' was the mantra Charlotte Grimshaw grew up with in her literary family. But when her life suddenly turned upside-down, she needed to re-examine the reality of that material.... The more she delved into her memories, the more the real characters in her life seemed to object. So what was the truth of 'a whole life lived in fiction'? This is a vivid account of a New Zealand upbringing, where rebellion was encouraged, where trouble and tragedy lay ahead. It looks beyond the public face to the 'messy reality of family life - and much more'.
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This is a book about love. In early 2019, Rick Morton, author of acclaimed, bestselling memoir One Hundred Years of Dirt, was diagnosed with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - which, as he says, is just a fancy way of saying that one of the people who should have loved him ...the most during childhood didn't. So, over the course of twelve months, he went on a journey to rediscover love. To get better. Not cured, not fixed. Just, better. This is a book about his journey to betterness, his year of living vulnerably. It's a book about love. What love is, how we see it, what forms it takes, how we practice it in our lives, what it means to us, and how we really, really can't live without it, even if, like Rick for many years, we think we can. As he says: 'People think they want cars, and they will, to get to jobs and appointments in cities and regions where public transport has failed them. But what gets them into those cars, out of the house, out of bed for God's sake, is love.' Praise for A Hundred Years of Dirt 'Morton mines questions that most of us feel too exhausted even to glance at. How did we get to be ourselves, and is it possible to change? And how can we begin to understand others who might seem like aliens? Morton is fresh...He's brilliant.' Helen Elliott, The Monthly 'Dark and provocative ... it's a reminder that this is a funny book and its author is a funny man. As Geordie Williamson notes in his review on this page, that sense of humour lifts this book above and beyond what it could have been: a human tragedy. It still is that. It's one of the saddest books I have read in a while, and one of the most honest .... I think this book should be read by every Australian.' Stephen Romei, The Australian 'Morton is a crack storyteller and his words and stories are infused with genuine compassion.' Christos Tsiolkas
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A formally audacious and deeply moving memoir in three timeframes that confronts the defining trauma of the twentieth century, and its effects on a father and son.

Natasha Trethewey was born in Mississippi in the 60s to a black mother and a white father. When she was six, Natasha's parents divorced, and she and her mother moved to Atlanta. There, her mother met the man who would become her second husband, and Natasha's stepfather. While she... was still a child, Natasha decided that she would not tell her mother about what her stepfather did when she was not there: the quiet bullying and control, the games of cat and mouse. Her mother kept her own secrets, secrets that grew harder to hide as Natasha came of age. When Natasha was nineteen and away at college, her stepfather shot her mother dead on the driveway outside their home. With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Memorial Drive is a compelling and searching look at a shared human experience of sudden loss and absence, and a piercing glimpse at the enduring ripple effects of white racism and domestic abuse. Luminous, urgent, and visceral, it cements Trethewey's position as one of the most important voices in America today.
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A unique blend of literary biography and family secrets at the centre of a love triangle between Elizabeth Bowen and the author's grandfather, Humphry House. 'A fascinating and moving portrait of love, loyalty and infidelity.' Sarah Waters