1min chapter

London Review Bookshop Podcast cover image

Blake Morrison & Cathy Rentzenbrink: Two Sisters

London Review Bookshop Podcast

CHAPTER

How to Write a Memoir

"I want to write a memoir and the fact that other people in it on the periphery, I mean, they have their right to be respected," she says. "There's auto fiction and we don't know with auto fiction, how much is autobiography and how much is fiction lies" She adds: "I think I feel this contract with the reader, I'm going to be as honest as possible and truthful as possible"

00:00
Speaker 3
So
Speaker 2
I always feel that, in fact, I want to write a memoir and the fact that other people in it on the periphery, I mean, they have their right to be respected. So I'm always, and also I think that the reasonable reader
Speaker 3
doesn't, doesn't expect, doesn't expect,
Speaker 2
actually almost no one, no, no one their writer to be the sort of person that sort of just merrily tramps all over everyone else in their life when it's the centrality of the, you know, when the central story is the important
Speaker 1
thing. It's interesting because I think that people are being much more experimental with memoir too than they were 30 years ago. And there's auto fiction and we don't know with auto fiction, how much is autobiography and how much is fiction lies. And I can't, I think I couldn't write auto fiction. I think I feel this contract with the reader, I'm going to be as honest as possible and truthful as possible. And I want that position of trust. Having said, which, you know, I love some of the practitioners of auto fiction and just don't think I could do it myself. I think you'd call Kanao Skard and Rachel Cusker, in sense, you'd call them writers of auto fiction. And I like their books immensely, but I don't think it's for
Speaker 2
me. One of the other very satisfying and interesting things about reading the book along with everything else is that you do what you describe at one point as a literature review on books about sisters. And you immediately discover some very
Speaker 3
interesting things because you're expecting to.

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