Your Voice in my Head - Emma Forrest

Your Voice in my Head was probably a strange choice of reading for a day when I was home sick from my job as a mental health worker but I am trying to read a lot of memoir styles for my university work at the moment so I thought I would give it a try.
I had heard Emma Forrest speak at the Sydney Writers Festival earlier this year and I was really impressed and intrigued hearing her talk about the process she went through in writing this book - and the fall out from it being published.
Your Voice in my Head is Emma's story of her experience with bipolar disorder, depression and suicidality. Emma writes very openly and honestly about her experiences with alternating low moods and mania and the times in which things have become so desperate she has attempted to take her life. Following one serious suicide attempt Emma begins a therapeutic relationship with Dr R - it is a relationship that, as she states, will help to save her life.
This book is often self indulgent in its style and content - but I was expecting that from a memoir about such a deeply personal and affecting experience and in this case I think it only added to the genuineness and authenticity of the book. There are some lighter, and very funny, moments in the book too and this helped to break up some of the deep reflective segments. At the end there is a definite strong sense of hope - Emma continues to battle with her illness but she now has on board significant skills and resources to help her.

Reading By Moonlight - Brenda Walker

Reading By Moonlight would have to be one of the most beautiful, lyrical and mesmerising books I have read in a long time. I have failed to get very much done today as I have been unable to tear myself about from this book.

Australian author and Professor of English, Brenda Walker has written Reading By Moonlight as a narrative of her journey through her diagnosis, treatment and recovery of breast cancer. What makes this slightly different from some other books of a similar focus is the way that Walker weaves her literary background and love of books and writing into her story - in a way, given that this is her background it would have been virtually impossible to exclude it.

Walker divides the book into five sections; surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, reconstruction and survival - whilst each section is part of a single narrative they also have their own individual feel and sense - which Walker describes through her own emotions and remembrances of the times but also on her recollection of the books she chooses to read through each period.

Some of the books and authors that Walker relies on to support her through this journey and ones that she shares with us in Reading By Moonlight include, The Hours - Michael Cunningham, Anna Karenina - Tolstoy, The Tale of Genji - Murasaki Shikibu, Voss - Patrick White, Edgar Allan Poe and her own novel in progress at the time - The Wing of Night. Each book and author discussed is done so in just enough detail so that the connection between that being discussed and Walker's own current situation is clear - although you never feel you are being preached at.

The book is sad and yet hopeful at the same time - and now only because Walker is able to end her book with a chapter called Survival.

There are so many wonderful, true and inspiring quotes I could leave you with from this already favourite book of mine but I will choose this one;

"To be honest I would rather tell you about books. A good book laces invisible fingers into the shape of a winter armchair or a hammock in the sun. I'm not talking about comfort, necessarily, but support. A good writer might take you to strange and difficult places, but you're in the hands of someone you trust".

So true, and I now add Brenda Walker high on the list of authors I trust.

An Education - Lynn Barber

I have wanted to see the movie version of An Education ever since I read about it and saw a preview - the glamorous life of a teenage London girl in the 1960's seeking to escape her working/middle class upbringing through an affair with a much older and more experienced man - sounds just like the dreams I had as a teenager growing up in rural Australia in the 1990's!

But before seeing the movie (which is now out on DVD in Australia) I did want to read the autobiography/memoir it is based on by English journalist, Lynn Barber.

My assumption is that the movie version focuses only on chapter two of the book where Barber re-tells the story of her affair/relationship/dalliance with a much older man when she is a 16 year old school girl in London. The book describes Barber's parents reactions to the relationship - surprisingly accepting - and her own doubts about the man who turns out to have one or two significant secrets. While I was initially disappointed to find that the book didn't focus on this period in Barber's life for longer - my reflective teenage self would have liked to hear more descriptions and tales from the weekend jaunts to Paris and Bruges - my disappointment was only short lived as I realised that this section of her life was only one interesting instance - many more followed in her life as an Oxford student and journalist.

I especially like the sections where Barber reflects on her work as a newspaper journalist where she discovered her passion for interviewing - a skill she clearly mastered if her several British Press Awards are anything to go by. My father is a journalist and I have always loved being a part of that world of newspaper production so this part of the book did bring back many fond memories for me.

This was an interesting and moving read for me - Barber is extremely open and honest in her writing and her reflections of her life - I really felt as though I was being let into her personal diaries - I only wished she had kept on writing.

A Life Like Other People's - Alan Bennett

A Life Like Other People's was lent to me by a work colleague with the phrase "he couldn't put it down once he started it" - definite praise. I had read Bennett's fiction, The Uncommon Reader last year and loved it and this biography of his parent's marriage and the life of their family was no exception - a beautiful, haunting read.

A Life Like Other People's is the core of Bennett's memoir, Untold Stories and it's focus is really on his parent's marriage and relationship but also the increasing episodes of depression his mother experiences when Bennett himself is middle aged. Bennett's writing is honest and stark - his descriptions of events clear and vivid and his reflections of his own behaviour and thoughts around particular events are introspective and telling. The title of the book comes from the feeling that the Bennett family was always a little bit apart from other families in their area - both in action and thought. Bennett himself felt this difference as a child and reflects on it now as an adult. What I found interesting is that the Bennett family was probably very similar to many other families of the era in lots of different ways - they had their family secrets (one in particular that Bennett discovers in the process of his mother being hospitalised for the first time for her depression) just as I am sure many other families did.

Bennett's reflections on the treatment of people with a mental illness and the elderly is a particular strong point of the book:

A life varies in social importance. We set most value on the life of a child.

Aunty Kathleen's life was at its lowest point of social valuation. She was seventy-three. She was senile. She was demented, and she was of no class or economic importance.

It is Bennett's writing that turns a fairly simple family story into an addictive and compelling read. I can't wait to read more.

Destined to Live - Sabina Wolanski

Destined To Live - One Woman's War, Life, Loves Remembered - Sabina Wolanski is my first book completed for the Non Fiction Five Challenge.

Sabina has written the book in collaboration with a well known Australian author, Diana Bagnall and it tells the story of her life growing up very happily in Poland before, at the age of 12, the Nazis invaded and World War 2 consumed her town and her family.

I feel Sabina writes very honestly, not only about the events that happened to her and her family, but also about her feelings and reactions to those events - it was very engaging.

Sabina survived the war but her parents, beloved older brother and most of her extended family and friends did not. Sabina talks about the loss of these people in her live and it is clear how these losses have impacted on her throughout her adult life.

Sabina was chosen to give the opening address for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin in 2005 and a copy of her speech is included in the book. Sabina states that she is "The voice of the six million tortured and murdered Jews of which one and a half million were children, and I am also the voice of the lucky few - the voice of the survivors".

I found Sabina's early and later story honest and compelling.