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[[Category:Autobiography|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Autobiography]]__NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->
{{Frontpage|isbn=B0GCB1MQ7D|title=Why My Mother Went Away|author=Alan Kennedy|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=I have often wondered how prominent people came to hold their positions. With 'celebrities', there's frequently a book they might or might not have written, which might or might not tell the true story. It's not often that you find a book that gives the full backstory, and rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is so perfect that you'll go back and reread paragraphs and sentences, just for the pleasure the words give. ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is one of those rare exceptions. It's the story of how a boy from the Midlands, born at the beginning of the Second World War, would become a Professor of Psychology at Dundee University. In fact, he was one of the founders of the department.}}{{Frontpage|author=Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Other Girl|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.'' Ernaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the author was even born. The large and instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.|isbn=1804271845}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1036916375|title=Just a Liverpool Lad|author=Peter McArdle|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=''Just a Liverpool Lad '' is a collection of memories and reflections from the years Peter McArdle spent growing up in and around Liverpool. <!Some are factual, such as the family history of a sea-going family, with the docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the what- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HEREmight-have->been. It's a book to settle into and allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, to think of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the blitz that was a constant factor in McArdle's early years. I'd never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and could appear after the all-clear was sounded.}}{{Frontpage|author=Annie Ernaux and Anna Moschovakis (translator)|title=The Possession|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Ernaux opens with a disclaimer, warning readers that what follows is more or less a confession: ''I have always wanted to write as if I would be gone when the book was published''. Towards the end of the book, she claims that the title (somewhat enigmatic at first) bares witness to a brief period of time in her life, labelled and documented here as ''The Possession'', in which she felt herself in the throes of an all-encompassing and seductive jealousy targeted at the new partner of W, a man she has since separated from after a six-year long affair. |isbn=1804271497}}{{Frontpage|author=Mary McCarthy|title=Memories of a Catholic Girlhood|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Mary McCarthy describes herself as an ''amateur architect'', obsessively digging into the past to piece together the broken mosaic of her life. She attributes her ''burning interest in the past'' to her orphanhood, as she lacked any second-hand memories from her parents, who died in the 1918 flu epidemic. This memoir chronicles her early years, beginning with her orphanhood in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she lived under the harsh guardianship of her late father's Irish Catholic parents and her abusive Uncle Myers and Aunt Margaret. Later, she moved to Seattle to live with her maternal grandparents—her grandmother being Jewish and her grandfather Presbyterian—who provided her with a different kind of upbringing.|isbn=1804271659}}{{Frontpage|author=Virginie Despentes|title=King Kong Theory|rating=4|genre=Autobiography |summary=''King Kong Theory'' is a hard-hitting memoir and feminist manifesto, which can be seen as a call to arms for women in a phallocentric society broken at its core. Originally written in French, the book is a collection of essays in which Virginie Despentes explores her experiences as a woman through the complex prism of her varied life: from rape to sex work and pornography. Though these discussions are intertwined, their placement within the book can feel somewhat disjointed, a reflection of their original form as independent essays.|isbn=191309734X}}{{Frontpage|author=Joan Didion|title=The Year of Magical Thinking|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=This book is Joan Didion's heartbreaking autobiographical account of the grief she endured following her husband's sudden death. Books that shed light on taboo topics like death are such a beautiful and necessary resource to help people feel less alone. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like self-pity, denial and delusion and makes them utterly normal, lends them a human face to wear.|isbn=0007216858}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1787333175|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=5|genre=Popular Science|summary=I was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, humour and autobiography. ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding. }}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0241636604
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=For Ian Mathie fans there is good and bad news. Ian has come up with the missing link in his narrative, the story of a very unusual childhood (yes, the very years that made him the amazing man he became). The bad – well it's hardly news two years later – is that the book is published posthumously. As always, it's beautifully written, with many exciting moments. What I most enjoyed was the feeling that many of the questions in Ian Mathie's later books are answered in ''Wild Child'' with a satisfying clunk. Seemingly all that's now left in the drawer is unpublishable.
}}
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