Thursday, August 18, 2022

Top 10 books about starting afresh

Born in Edinburgh and raised in the Scottish Borders, Ali Millar now lives in London.

She has an MA with distinction in Creative Writing from Edinburgh Napier University where she graduated with the class medal. As producer and broadcast journalist she has interviewed some of the world's leading authors, including Etgar Keret and Marina Warner.

The Last Days: a memoir of faith, desire and freedom is her first book.

At the Guardian Millar tagged ten books that "explore the possibilities and perils of remaking one’s life," including:
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Following the death of her husband, John Dunne, Didion takes the reader deep inside her experience of grief and the madness it brings, showing the near impossibility of moving beyond such a huge loss. Instead, as the year progresses, she becomes convinced he’ll return. All the hallmarks of Didion’s writing are here: her tightly honed eloquence, her pared back prose. It is also an eerily quiet book; grief both stalks and haunts the page. This is a new beginning that’s nearly impossible to move towards.
Read about the other entries on the list.

The Year of Magical Thinking is among Mary-Frances O'Connor's five books for the grieving brain, Karolina Waclawiak's six books on loss and longing, Tara Westover's top four inspirational memoirs, Mark Whitaker's six favorite memoirs, Adam Haslett's five best deathless accounts of mourning, Douglas Kennedy's top ten books about grief, and Norris Church Mailer's five best memoirs. It is a book that made a difference to Samantha Bee.

--Marshal Zeringue