TeD DeKker - Suspense Magazine

Creating a Book Club:A Girl’s Desperate Need for FriendshipMEmoirs!By: Amanda GoossenMemoirs are taking over bookstores. Iremember when I was a child and I learnedabout biographies and their importance to theworld. I remember reading a biography of GeorgeWashington and one on Abraham Lincoln, menwho changed the world, changed America andmost definitely helped create the very classroomin which I was sitting. I read the biography ofMartin Luther King and when I was twentytwoyears old was able to visit the LoraineMotel (now the site of the National Civil RightsMuseum) where Dr. King was murdered. Iflashed back to my history classes and wasproud to be well educated and full of knowledge.Memoirs however, are becoming a major part ofthe literary world, some of the most famous andcelebrated authors today have written page afterpage of memories that for some reason intriguean outlandish amount of people. This month mybook club attempted to read our second memoirin less than a year, leaving us to debate a somewhatobvious question: why in the heck are so many people writing about their lives andwhy do an enormous amount of readers line up to buy them?In 2006, Augusten Burroughs’ “Running with Scissors” was a smashingsuccess. Burroughs approach to writing about the insanity of his childhood allowedhis story to sit on the New York Times bestseller list for over four years, to be published inover twenty countries and eventually to be made into a movie starring Annette Bening,Joseph Fines, Alec Baldwin and Gwyneth Paltrow. I understand Burroughs successwith this novel and sympathize with the tumultuous life from which he has sprung.Our choice this month however, was Augusten Burroughs 2008 memoir “A Wolf at theTable: A Memoir of My Father” the sixth of seven books written by Burroughs. “A Wolfat the Table: A Memoir of My Father” is a detailed account of Burroughs desperate battleas a young boy to receive love and attention from his father. It's a heart-breaking talewhere the reader cannot help but feel for this young boy’s plea. His father is psychotic,an alcoholic who drinks the “tea” sitting on the counter in tall glasses day in and dayout. He is abusive and frightening, a man that I feared from the outside looking in.“A Wolf at the Table” may have been terrifying and sad, desperate and horrifying,graphic and disgusting, but it was also un-enjoyable to read. There was nothing about4 Suspense Magazine May 2010 / Vol. 011