Memorial Drive

Oh wow. This book. It was recommended to me by Traci of The Stacks when she came on our podcast. It is so good, but it will just wreck you. I put it down and was just… shaken. If domestic violence is a trigger for you, I would definitely recommend skipping this, but otherwise, read it.. it’s beautifully written and worth the sadness. Domestic violence isn’t a trigger for me and still just left me… crushed. And I realized from reading this book that I love dark, but I do best when it’s dark but… impersonal. Fiction, or a journalist’s account of a serial killer. This was real and deep and personal and it just… breaks your heart again and again. When Natasha Trethewey (a Pulitzer Prize winning poet) was 19, her mother was murdered by her step-father. The book is a memoir of her childhood and her relationship with her mother, life growing up in the deep south, the torment she endured because of her father, and then (probably most upsetting) documents outlining conversations between her mother and her step-father, as well as her mother’s journal entries. My favorite part (it’s hard to call this a favorite) was a short portion of the book, written by her mother as she tried to escape the marriage. I read it while getting a pedicure and found myself crying in public: something I don’t ever do. This book is hard to read but please read it. It’s incredible.