On Memoir

Last night at the British Library the Royal Society of Literature put on an evening On Memoir, moderated by Rupert Christiansen. It’s a genre that held little appeal to me when I was young — devouring 20th century novels at a rate of several a week — and in my 40s and 50s history and biography took centre stage. But perhaps in one’s 60s one becomes more reflective, more introspective, mulling over one’s life, what one did and what one might have done. And in fact my own last book, Eccles Cakes, was a childhood memoir. I found it was very therapeutic writing it, so I was interested to hear Sigrid Rausing at the RSL event say that writing her account of having a brother and sister-in-law who were drug addicts, Mayhem, was cathartic. I loved her memoir and was pleased to take part in a book group discussion of it immediately before the RSL evening. Interestingly, the group split almost exactly down the middle between those, like myself, who really empathised with the author’s experience and others who felt quite alienated by it. In the evening discussion, Sigrid Rausing was joined by Aida Edemariam (interviewed by James Naughtie in a recent BBC World book show) and Philippe Sands. Aida Edemariam’s book, The Wife’s Tale, is based on interviews with her now deceased Ethiopian grandmother, whereas Philippe Sands’ East West Street traces not only the footsteps of his grandfather in Lviv (now in Ukraine) but also, among others, the originator of the word “genocide”, Raphael Lemkin. So although each of the authors had dealt with family members, involving both memory and research, their books are very different. It was fascinating to hear how Philippe Sands was shepherded by his editor in structuring and rewriting his memoir; I thought such editors no longer existed! But one thing that struck me about all three authors was the intensity of their connection to their subject matter — more so, perhaps, than that of any novelist or biographer.

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