Sarah Manguso: The Guardians

[leyla]

Welcome back, WLF, we missed you.

Here's a review of Sarah Manguso's second memoir from The Independent on Sunday. What's a young woman doing being the author of two memoirs you may ask. Well, each of the, deals with a specific topic - her first, which I reviewed in The Indy on Sunday a while back, dealt with her auto immune illness. This, her second, is about her experience of a friend's suicide. Both volumes are very slim and don't take long to read. I think she's smart and funny, amd if she occasionally comes across as sounding selfish, it's perhaps because she is very open about her feelings whereas most of us self censor to a degree. In any case, you don't have to like an author to like her writing, and that's how I feel about Manguso. Here's the review:


http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...o-7813300.html

[Eric]

You're a reviewer, Leyla, so in a way you are in a different class, however much you empathise with Manguso owing to certain common experiences. But what sort of "lay" reader would you imagine picking up such a books, firstly about auto-immune illness, secondly about suicide and psychosis? What do you think the reaction of the average Independent book-browser would be to the books after reading your reviews? Would they go and buy or borrow them (or at least one) on the strength of your reviews? Would the books be therapeutic for a certain class of reader? Would the books also attract a more prurient type of reader?

[leyla]

Eric, obviously memoir will rarely sell in the numbers that some genres will, but there are readers who are curious about the experiences of others. Joan Didion is a respected writer and two of her recent books have been memoirs about death and bereavement. Manguso's first memoir received a rave full page review from the Sunday Times after I'd sent my own review in to the Indy and also won acclaim from many other publications. Books can fulfil so many different purposes in life, and readers are so varied that there will always be people who want to read about the traumatic experiences of others. Look at how well misery memoirs sell. Manguso writes literary versions of those, if you like, with the added appeal of being honest, as Rachel Cusk is, and therefore not hiding behind the cliched role of the victim.