Tag: Memoir

ADVENTURES IN MASHONALAND by Rose Blennerhassett and Lucy Sleeman

Clearly I did not really understand what total ballers some Victorian woman were.  This book is the first-person account of some young nurses who decided to come to Mashonaland in the 1890s, and it is some hair-raising stuff. I thought they were all at home wearing corsets and having vapours, but apparently not. 

This was when Florence Nightingale had made nursing acceptable for Victorian women, and what I got from this book is that girls who wanted out grabbed this opportunity with both hands. In this case, the nurses are asked to go to Mashonaland when there is no road or train, and after various efforts by boat, (and being abandoned by the Bishop), they get tired of waiting and decide to walk – from Beira!  Here is a discussion with the various men telling them not to try it:

No women he had known had ever walked in Africa; even men found it trying, and sometimes died on the way.  We told our excellent advisors that we could only  die once, and that dying was just as disagreeabale in a room as on the veldt.  If women had never walked in Africa there was no reason why they should not begin

It’s an extraordinary walk, and when they get there the hospital is hardly a hut.  They spend two years dealing with ‘fever’ (I assume malaria?), and with all kinds of other wild problems, lions, etc.  One of them finds someone to marry.  I liked this line:

Africa is the land of the unforeseen. . . ‘Questions,’ ‘wars,’ ‘difficulties’ spring up at an instant’s notice.

So true still today, though we call them ‘challenges.’  So tough are the conditions that when the next batch of nurses arrive to take over (a road having been built) half of them turn around and go back to Beira! 

An amazing story of people leading big crazy lives against the odds.

COLD CREMATORIUM by Jozsef Debreczeni

Here is a really stomach-churning account of the Nazi death camps.  It is written by a Hungarian journalist, who brings his professional eye to describing how he survived.  I was amazed it is not more famous. The Introduction tells me this is because it has only recently been translated from the Hungarian.  The book begins with the author, Jozsef Debreczeni, being captured in June 1944. Arriving at the first of the camps, the old, young, and female are separated out to the left.  Then the Nazis say that those on the left will get to ride in a truck up the hill, so anyone who feels they cannot walk up the hill should also go to the left. Debreczeni nearly takes the offer, but is fortunate to hear an existing prisoner whisper to him to stay.  Of course all those on the left go directly to be gassed. 

Those on the right go on to hard labour, which is pretty horrifying, but not nearly so bad as what happens when he is somehow sent on to a hospital camp.  Here he lies naked, 2-3 to a bunk, in huge dormitories with almost nothing to eat, and with no one clearing up the sewage, so it is ankle deep at all times.  They do hear news of the front, so they understand that the Nazis have lost, but the question is if they can stay alive long enough for the Russians to get to them.  When the Red Army appears with sausages and throws it on his bed I felt like weeping. 

One thing that really surprised me in this story was his account of how much of the camp order – and how much of the decisions on who and how to deprive of food – was made by fellow prisoners. Apparently the Nazis created a hierarchy, and those prisoners at the top were, in his view, quite merciless to those below.  They loom as much larger villains than their actual captors.  Once the Nazi soldiers decide to run away, what is interesting is the prisoner hierarchy run away too, and while none are caught in the author’s camp, in others they were hanged by the other prisoners.

THE RECOLLECTIONS OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER 1864-1875 by William Finaughty

As always with these kinds of books one is just left stunned by how very much more wildness there used to be in the world.  Try this:

We had scattered out, Mr Price being on my right, when he came racing along by the side of about 300 to 400 giraffe.  It was a wonderful and beautiful sight.  It seemed  a pity to shoot them, but we bottled up sentiment and got five of them.

300-400 giraffe?!? I’ve never seen a group larger than about 10. I didn’t even know they would naturally herd in that size, because I guess there just aren’t enough of them alive to do so. He also at one point sees an elephant herd a MILE AND A HALF LONG.  Even if he’s exaggerating, it’s still enormous.

I learnt a lot from this book, not least that older male giraffe do not make good eating, and so are colloquially known as ‘stinkbulls.’  It is sad to note the collapse of the ecosystem even in his lifetime.  When he first came, he could shoot into a herd and elephants would not even run, they were so unused to bullets.  After ten years, if you sounded a gun anywhere, you wouldn’t even see any elephants for days. 

Apparently he went on to gold prospecting and gambling addiction.  A full life.

A YEAR ON EARTH WITH MR HELL by Young Kim

The review I first read about this book was illustrated with a photo of a young Asian woman holding the hand of a much older European man.  The review spent much time discussing whether or not the book is revenge porn, and to my surprise the pornographer is in fact the young woman.

Basically, the guy was married, and had an affair with this lady, and this is the story of that affair.  This is all sounds very salacious but in fact for a book with really a lot of sex in it, it is remarkably straightforward.  There’s a lot of chat about what she wore, and when he did or not text her back.  It was drafted in real-time, as the relationship was happening, which gives it an interesting kind of immediacy.

What I found especially interesting was what this lady did for a living, which, as far as I can tell, was nothing too much.  She had previously been with another much older man, Malcolm McLaren, who she met when she was a student at Yale, and after his death (about which she is clearly heart-broken) she mostly curates his artistic legacy.  She spends her year going between New York and various European capitals, having dinners, going to openings, and wearing designer shoes. I tried not to think the word ‘parasite,’ as of course that is uncharitable.  I guess I like my artists starving.

One unfortunate sidepoint is a comment on the quality of a Yale education.  She tells us (without shame!) that she has never paid for a first date, because that is not her ‘role.’  She also says she is not a feminist, because, get this, she ‘takes sexual equality for granted.’  What gibberish.  Should have been whipped out of her freshman year.

THE WRONG KNICKERS by Bryony Gordon

Here is a memoir that I thought would be a fun canter through someone’s twenties in London. In fact I found it rather triggering. Will sound dumb, but I guess I had never really thought about what it would be like to come up in this city and not be an immigrant. And let me tell you: it’s very different.

It’s wild to imagine what it would be like to feel free to live in your overdraft. The author was of course not happy about struggling to pay her bills, but she kept doing it, because she enjoyed booze and clothes and cigarettes more. I mean: don’t we all? But I guess if you know full well you have a Plan B, in terms of a family home in Fulham to return to, you have that freedom.

If she is in a flat she doesn’t like, she just leaves. Because she has somewhere to go to. Imagine! One time she gets mugged, and she regards that as a good enough reason to go. And so, wildly, does everyone she knows! I can’t even imagine a London with so much mercy in it.

THE WOMAN IN ME by Britney Spears

I chose this on impulse as an audiobook to listen to on a long car ride, and I did not expect to emerge as TEAM BRITNEY. I am not sure what I thought the #freebritney movement was all about, but WOW I did not realize how right they were.

I knew that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it was quite common to get rid of difficult women by putting them in asylums, but did not realize how very much this is exactly what happened to one of the more famous pop stars of our generation. Britney’s father knew exactly what he was doing, because both his mother, and his step-mother, were put in asylums by his father. I am not saying Britney is 100% well, but she was well enough to be forced to do Vegas shows 7 times a week, tour the world, go on morning TV shows, etc. She certainly was well enough to have her own cell phone and choose her own boyfriends and eat french fries if she wanted to!

I can’t believe it went on for thirteen years! It is an appalling story. I recommend it. Britney had a wild and interesting life even before she was imprisoned in plain sight by her father, and it makes for a great memoir.

STAY TRUE by Hua Hsu

Here is a book about grief. It is written by someone born in the same year as me, and tells about his best friend in university, who died when he was a junior. It was eerie to read a book so exactly of my time-and-place. That rarely happens for me. I enjoyed this for example, something I had forgotten about:

Back then, years passed when you wouldn’t pose for a picture. You wouldn’t think to take a picture at all. Cameras felt intrusive to everyday life. It was weird to walk around with one, unless you worked for the school paper, which made picture taking seem a little less creepy.

I’d forgotten about a time before photos were the default.

The story was a sad one. What struck me was how much I now recognize what grief looks like: the guilt about what you could have done differently (oh GOD, the guilt), the retrospective wondering what your relationship meant, and etc. I can’t imagine how the author got together the emotional resilience to write it. I barely had the resilience to read it.

One thing I have been thinking about recently is how anytime someone dies, you read about them in the paper after a stabbing or whatever, there is almost always really bereft family and friends left behind. It’s kind of beautiful to think that every random person you see in the street is so surrounded by love.

DEAR GIRLS by Ali Wong

Here is a set of essays by a stand-up comic, structured as letters to her young daughters.  It is fun and silly.  Here she is on a failed one night stand:

That’s what happens when you spontaneously go home with a fellow struggling stand-up comic or, even worse, an improviser.  (Please says say ‘fuck no’ to those ‘yes and’ mother fuckers).

I have for some reason read quite a few books by stand-ups, and I’m always struck by how incredibly rough it sounds: the travel, the horrible venues, the silent audiences.  I admire it.  I was especially touched by her early twenties, which sound a lot like mine:

Every day in NYC was about spending as little money as possible. 

People don’t talk about that too much, preferring to focus on having genius or technique or whatever, but in my experience being able to live on nothing is way more important

RAINBOW’S END by Lauren St John

Here is a book that aches for the past, and a place. It’s about a childhood on a Zimbabwean farm, and let me tell you it is not recommended reading for the English winter. The author is about ten years older than me, and so bears the unfortunate burden of actually remembering the war. This makes her childhood days on the farm somewhat hair-raising. The farm they live on, Rainbow’s End, was previously owned by a family who were killed by guerillas in the war. One of the family was a little boy who SAT NEXT TO HER IN CLASS. When she moves in she finds HUMAN BLOOD ON HER WARDROBE DOOR.

And then apparently she goes on to have a blissful childhood, as the farm is also a game reserve, and she is mad for horses. She is also big on Zimbabwean food, which I enjoyed, it is not often I hear the joys of Mazowe described as they should be. In any case, it was interesting to read what it was like for young people to see the end of the war, and how it changed their perspective on what it had all been for. I am glad to be spared that burden.

I was struck by how much of Zim life is unchanged form the war. She talked about people ‘making a plan’ which I thought was a more modern framing, to do with our current issues, but apparently not. The book is full of the beauty of the landscape, and of dread. Here is an example sentence:

In late 1979, when our friends Bev and Fred Bradnick (in whose garden Lisa had once found a live grenade) were firebombed by terrorists on their farm on the Lowood Road . .

Can you believe that finding a live grenade is just a parenthesis? In other memoirs that would be a chapter. Bizarrely, what ages the author the most is not the blood on wardrobe doors, or the dead horses, but the discovery her father is having an affair. But there you go, I guess everyone has their own problems.

QUIETLY HOSTILE by Samantha Irby

Irby is the only author I’ve read who comes close to Sedaris. I love her three previus books, MEATY, WE ARE NEVER MEETING IN REAL LIFE, and WOW NO THANK YOU. She writes personal essys in the voice of the internet, which I feel is a whole new form, no doubt to be quickly replaced by the voice of or AI overlords.

This fourth book, QUIETLY HOSTILE, I also enjoyed, though perhaps not as much as the others. In part, I guess, I am used to her style, so it delights me less. In part, also, she is doing better in her life, and somehow that always make for a less fun essay. I noticed the same thing with Sedaris: no matter how charming you are, it hard to really warm up to anecdote that involves buying trousers for $300.

In the first books, Irby is a single receptionist in Chicago with a long list of health problems. In QUIETLY HOSTILE she is happily married and living in rural Western Michigan. You ae fond of her, so glad it has gone well, but somehow its not quite as funny. That said, I’ll buy the next one on pre-order too.