Page 17 - Panama City Living May/June 2019

BOOK REVIEWS
PREFACE
A peek inside someone’s life, a glimpse behind the curtains, eavesdropping on an author’s most intimate and vulnerable conversations, reliving someone else’s experiences—that’s what reading a memoir seems to me. As a prelude to light summer reading, I recommend three very different memoirs, each of them giving readers a glimpse of experiences so entirely different than what we might regard as “normal,” and so well written they offer an experience that comes close to reliving sections of the author’s
life.
Dani Shapiro’s latest, “Inheritance, A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity and Love,” (2019), is an excellent example of an author’s gumption on display. On a lark, Dani takes a DNA test. Weeks later, her world is turned upside down and inside out when the test results reveal she is not who she thought she was. Her father, now deceased, is not her biological father. Looking back on her life, she realizes there was a reason she often felt out of step, different, or disconnected. She's a prolific writer, and the themes of loss and searching appear often in her previous work. She unflinchingly shares the experience, turmoil, and angst as she comes to terms with who she really is, how she came to be, and how she will live the rest of her life.
“The Salt Path” (2018), by Raynor Winn, is quirky in its delivery. A British couple in their 50s lose everything they own following a poor business investment. They now have nowhere to live, no possessions, and no means of financial support. To make matters worse, the husband receives a catastrophic medical diagnosis; his physicians offer little, sending him home, and suggesting he take it easy. Instead, and because they have nothing better to do, they decide to walk the South West Coast Path of England, all 630 miles of it. With no training, meager and not necessarily well-thought-out provisions, no plans and just a few quid in their pockets, they set off.
I recently hiked a small sliver of the path and, while my circumstances were entirely different, I was incredulous as I read Winn’s account of the experience. Taking on such an endeavor isn’t normally something to be done lightly or poorly prepared. That they were successful was a pleasant surprise, although there is a sense of sadness throughout most of the book. Their walk was often grueling and seemingly hopeless, but finishing the entire 630 miles led them to a place of peace and healing.
And if ever an unquenchable thirst for knowledge was on full display, it is bluntly and painfully revealed
in Tara Westover’s 2018 memoir, “Educated.” Dysfunctional does not come close to describing her family’s dynamics. Raised in an intensely—arguably fanatical—religious family, her parents refused to send their children to school, choosing instead to homeschool them. They were not even allowed to see a doctor.
The Westover children were certainly schooled, but not in a conventional sense of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Westover, the youngest of seven children, after years of struggling on her own, buying whatever old schoolbooks she could find to teach herself math, breaks away at the age of 16, and applies for admission to Brigham Young University. She is accepted and continues her pursuit of an education—relentless, brave, tortured, and even heartbreaking. With little to no family support or encouragement, she encounters roadblocks at every turn—financial, social, emotional—yet, she ultimately accomplishes exactly what she set out to do, graduating from BYU with honors, receiving a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge at Trinity College, completeing a visiting fellowship at
Harvard University, and then returning to Cambridge to earn a doctorate in intellectual history. It was shortlisted for several prestigious literary awards, and the New York Times named it one of the best books of the year.
Three different books, but each so very personal and revealing, typically what one would hope to find in a memoir. I have often expressed awe at the sheer tenacity it must take to write a book, but the accomplishment of writing a memoir demands an entirely different level of respect and admiration. These three memoirs are different in the paths taken, yet similar in the sheer guts it takes to reveal the author’s deepest feelings.
What’s your favorite memoir? Send me an email and tell me all about it.
Submit your book review for consideration to: Laura@panamacityliving.com PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIKE FENDER
SPECIAL THANKS TO THE GULF COAST STATE COLLEGE FOR ALLOWING US TO TAKE PHOTOS AT ITS LIBRARY
www.PanamaCityLiving.com • May–June 2019 • 17