Unhappy endings

Leslie Jamison anatomises her broken marriage in a candid new memoir - but who or what was really to blame?

Historically, memoirs have typically been end-of-life recollections of an individual's place in the tide of world events. Many contemporary international writers of autobiographical fiction carry on that tradition, braiding the intimate details of their lives with the revolutionary arcs of their times. But there are some memoirists whose gaze faces solipsistically inwards, leading to a naked evisceration of the self. These writers are often quite young and their stories frequently concern recovery from addictions, eating disorders, dysfunctional families, lack of privilege or too much privilege, bigotry, abuse, bouts of severe depression and grappling with incurable illness. Their wars are not experienced on the battlefield but within themselves. There is no shame, no detail too graphic nor too personal to excavate as they struggle with their own Scylla and Charybdis until their personal demons are wrestled to defeat.

In the past, these struggles were often documented in such fictional explorations as Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Joanne Greenberg's I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Today, such interior odysseys have emerged from the veil of fiction to be written as memoirs. Unlike autobiographies, which are usually written in chronological order and emphasise facts and historical events, memoirs cover specific episodes or situations, emphasising emotional experience and interiority. They are much more impressionistic and employ time in creative ways.

This free lyricism allows authors the freedom of speculation and emotional elasticity, giving their accounts an air of novelistic invention. Leslie Jamison's third book, the "critical" memoir The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, falls into this memoir category.