For Top Ten Tuesday this week, we could pick any genre and do a top ten list, so I thought I’d highlight this unusual genre (subgenre? class? category?) of fiction that I enjoy – novels written in the form of memoirs. Are these metafiction? Autofiction? Not those awful books that purport to be memoirs but turn out to be fiction, but novels that are written as memoirs, so the first-person narrator/”author” can include speculation on how well they’re remembering details of a past event, for example, or provide insights that come from reflection, etc.
I definitely don’t want the author of the novel and the character of the author in the novel to be the same person in reality. The ones I like the best, though, are the cleverest ones and hardest to write – when the “memoir” is purportedly written by the author whose name is on the cover.
On my list, only two fall into this sub-category: My Brilliant Friend (Book 1 of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet) and The Word Is Murder (Book 1 of the Hawthorne/Horowitz mysteries).
But as far as actual fiction genres go, this list has something for every taste — literary fiction, horror, fantasy, mystery, and science fiction.
Brains: A Zombie Memoir by Robin Becker
Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Search by Michelle Huneven
The Humans by Matt Haig
The Word Is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
Fairy Tale by Stephen King
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
These are just the top ten that came to mind of the ones I have read. I feel sure there are more, but I guess my tags in LibraryThing aren’t as good as I thought they were because I couldn’t uncover them.
These next five are books that I liked and considered for the list, but decided that although they’re all written in the first-person, they weren’t really written in the style of memoirs. (I could be wrong, though, especially about A Boy’s Life and The Liar’s Diary because it’s been too long since I read them.)
- Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller
- Elinor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
- A Boy’s Life by Robert MacCammon
- Devil House by John Darnielle
- The Liar’s Diary by Patry Francis
Others that would fit the list but that I haven’t read are mentioned in these articles:
Memoir, Fiction, or Something in Between by Pip Finkmeyer
8 Novels That Blur the Line Between Memoir and Fiction by Rachel Cusk
I’m sharing this with Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. You’ll find many other Top Ten book lists there. If this “genre” of novels written as memoir doesn’t interest you, check out the other lists!
