Misery Memoirs, Painful Lives or Uplifting Tales?

In our recent Book Group we read The Bigamist by Mary Turner Thomson, the remarkable true story of how Thomson was systematically deceived and abused by the man she loved, and how she eventually uncovered the truth behind her 'husband'. This story was remarkable for two reasons: the extent of the deception and the lies piled upon the author; and the lightness, simplicity and humour with which Thomson told it.

The Bigamist was published by Edinburgh's Mainstream Publishing, one of the most successful payers in this genre. For publishers, this is "inspirational-lit" - heart-warming tales of the resilience of the human spirit, of triumph over adversity.

However, some brand this genre as "misery memoir", with readers taking a prurient delight in the suffering of others; the literary equivalent of The Jerry Springer Show. Are authors competing to "out-misery" each other? Is no celebrity childhood complete without suffering at the hands of a drunken mother or drug-fuelled uncle?

The genre first came to life with Dave Pelzer's A Child Called It and Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes. But controversy soon followed, with questions raised over Kathy O'Beirne's Don't Ever Tell, and, most famously, James Frey's A Million Little Pieces: Frey was found to have exaggerated and lied throughout much of his book. And it does seem strange that following the million-dollar successes of Pelzer and McCourt, both their brothers felt compelled to write their own stories...

So why write these miserable tales? Well, for many victims of abuse, writing can be a cathartic process, helping them to understand, cope and move on from the suffering they endured. Publishing these stories can help other victims understand that they are not alone in their suffering. And as Mary Turner Thomson explained in The Bigamist, for some it is important to be able to stand up, be vocal, and say "I was not defeated, I am not ashamed to have been a victim".

We asked Carol McKay, who co-wrote Glaswegian Eileen Munro's own "misery memoir" As I Lay Me Down To Sleep, to explain how they wrote the book, and to explain the importance of the "misery memoir" genre.

Carol McKay on Writing As I Lay Me Down To Sleep

I met Eileen Munro in February 2007 when she arrived, half an hour late, for an Open University day school I was teaching. The motorway into Glasgow was blocked and she’d had to find another way. Over the last year I’ve learned that resilience in the face of obstacles is characteristic of Eileen.

That first day, she pushed open the classroom door and flooded the room like a torrent of white water, or perhaps like the sudden blaze of sun on a turbulent day. She soon had the students and her bemused teacher smiling.

Eileen’s known for her charm. She’s effusive, spontaneous, mercurial. Uncontainable. She’s impulsive, creative, wittily entertaining. She draws attention and visitors to where she is just as surely and immediately as magnetic north draws compass needles.

Maybe that’s overplaying it. But listen: Eileen has addressed a cross party committee of the Scottish Parliament which was taking evidence from survivors of child sexual abuse. Speaking without cue cards, off the cuff and straight from the heart, she had hardened politicians dabbing at their cheeks. She is, first and foremost, an exceptional communicator.

So why did she approach me to help her write her autobiography?

As I Lay Me Down to Sleep is the story of her first sixteen years from her birth in a Salvation Army mother and baby hostel in Glasgow to the birth of her own son. It encompasses her adoption six weeks after birth, neglect by her alcoholic and violent parents and abuse by a supposed family friend. Perhaps most gruelling: one New Year’s night she huddled in the hearth as her mother died.

"Through the glass of the living room window and the hollow steel walls I could hear party noises from people who were celebrating, going first-footing to neighbouring houses, bringing them luck. Still I sat, watching my mother. She was slumped in her chair, folded in on herself. She’d never been quite so drunk as this. There was a stillness about her and I watched to see that she was breathing. There was a strange sound, then urine poured out through the bottom of her chair and on to the carpet... I touched my mother’s hand. It was cold."

Eileen had been approached before by journalists who were keen to ghost write her story. Though some of them were her friends, she turned them down. Having long harboured a desire to be a writer, she wanted to write it herself. That was why she signed up for the Open University second level course A215 Creative Writing. I was her tutor. A few months after our first meeting at that day school, she phoned me and asked if I knew anyone who’d be interested in helping her structure and edit her life story. She outlined some of her milestones and I told her I was interested. Many of the issues she has faced in her life I’ve dealt with in my fiction writing. There were other factors, too, like the bond between people whose childhoods were blighted by alcohol. We met for coffee.

Our working pattern was quickly established. Eileen wrote a first draft and sent it to me. I edited it and sent it back. At first, I was cautious. I barely changed a comma. She was protective. She barely accepted the changing of a single comma. There followed a period of angst on both our parts.

There were also questions of genre to come to terms with. Eileen’s a political animal. Not a party political one, but one who has campaigned for children in care and who are subjected to all kinds of abuse there. Integrity is crucial to her. She wanted to tell the facts about her story and to name and shame those individuals and institutions that she knows have been found wanting. However, she’s also astute. Who could fail to be aware of the current vogue for so called ‘painful life’ and ‘misery lit’ memoirs? To spread the word about the culture of that’s-a-shame-but-I’m-off-home-at-five-o’clock in the care-system it was important to reach a big audience. A big readership in a genre style would – it was hoped – enable Eileen greater access to newspaper and other outlets where she could make her serious political points.

‘Painful life’ genre it had to be.

I put together a proposal and sent it to a literary agent recommended by Sandra Brown, author of Where There is Evil, who is a friend of Eileen. Her agent recommended we approach Bill Campbell at Mainstream Publishing direct. I sent the first 10,000 words of the manuscript off to him. Bill was complimentary, but cautious. He asked for another 10,000 words and he inspired confidence.

After that Eileen and I found our equitable writing style. She still wrote the first drafts but I was freer in suggesting revisions. Sometimes I’d undertake those revisions and send them back for her to look over; sometimes we worked together in her room, Eileen sitting with her back to me for a degree of privacy, talking her story – putting into words the ugliness of her experience, be it abuse, violence or the stultifying emptiness of being unloved in care.

Humour was important in her story. Facts even more so. The detailed care notes and reports made by her social workers fill a massive lever arch file. Her medical notes another. These gave a time-line and an awful accuracy to her subjective memories, augmented by her own files of poems, doodles and diaries kept throughout her teenage years.

We both learned through the writing process. I showed Eileen the technique of capturing herself like a character, physically embodied and in action in specific scenes. This draws the reader in to relive Eileen’s childhood experience. Eileen taught me about spontaneity and about grinning whenever the motorway’s blocked.

The day Bill Campbell said, ‘Yes’ we walked sedately down Mainstream’s curving grand staircase, crossed the road and turned the corner out of sight. Then, ‘Yes!’ our excitement echoed louder than Edinburgh’s one o’clock gun. Within months the book was published in the UK and across North America. Bill and Mainstream’s staff have been generous in the support they’ve given. Working with them has been a whole new experience.

Is it Eileen’s story? Undoubtedly. Did I ghost write it? No. It’s a collaboration. Hopefully a seamless one. Is it a ‘painful life’ story? A misery memoir? It is, and it’s much more. It’s the coming of age story of a working class female adolescent, alienated and adrift, who, when she held her new-born son ‘was all too aware that, for the first time in my life, I was looking at another human being who was connected to me by blood.’

Eileen’s story is like Eileen: it’s by turns mischievous and poignant, borne down and buoyed up. If writing about an individual’s childhood neglect and abuse makes it a misery memoir, then As I Lay Me Down to Sleep is a misery memoir. If writing about the loneliness of human experience and the struggle to find a plateau of acceptance is the raison d’etre of literature, then Eileen Munro has climbed that mountain.

Books featured in this article

Other recent 'misery memoirs'

  • Cover scan of How Could He Do It?
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    How Could He Do It?
    Emma Charles - Hardback - Preface
    This is a mother's account of how a daughter and a family were betrayed by the father and the system which should have protected them.
  • Cover scan of Love Hurts
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    £5.94
    Love Hurts: The True Story Of A Life Destroyed
    Jeff Randall - Paperback - Mainstream
    This brutally honest book charts the life of a boy who just wanted to be loved but when love eventually came he was too damaged to recognize it. Only by confronting the nightmare of his childhood and coming to terms with his past has he been able to stop his downward spiral.
  • Cover scan of Ma, I'm Getting Myself A New Mammy
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    £8.49
    Ma, I'm Getting Meself A New Mammy: The Heartbreaking True Story Of A Little Girl Who Just Wanted To Be Loved
    Martha Long - Paperback - Mainstream
    Aged 13, Martha is rescued by the courts from the clutches of her evil stepfather, Jackser, and her feckless mother, Sally. After numerous arrests for shoplifting, a judge rules that she is to be sent to a convent school with the instruction that she is to get an education. However, with the nuns she endures a lonely existance.
  • Cover scan of Mummy, Take Me Home

    £6.79
    Mummy, Take Me Home: A Mother's Tug-Of-Love Torment
    David Leslie - Paperback - Mainstream
    'Mummy, Take Me Home' is the story of a Scottish woman's tragic descent into alcoholism and drug addiction after losing custody of her daughter. It is a gripping, disturbing true-life story of a tug of love that no mother should ever face and no child should be forced to endure.
  • Cover scan of Never To Return

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    Never To Return
    Sandy Reid - Paperback - Black & White
    This is the shocking story of Sandy Reid and his big sister, Maggie, and what happened to them when they were taken from their parents and the travellers' way of life. Sandy ended up in the clutches of 'Uncle Dave' who systematically abused children in his care.
  • Cover scan of What Daddy Did
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    What Daddy Did: The Shocking True Story Of A Little Girl Betrayed
    Donna Ford - Hardback - Vermilion
    In this haunting and frank account, Donna Ford writes about the horrific abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of her stepmother and, to a lesser extent, her father, and also about how this abuse continued even after her stepmother left the family home when she was eleven.
Last modified Thursday 26 May 2011