Nonfiction or creative nonfiction?
I’m not quite sure where the line is, and I’m not sure if there’s an answer. The nonfiction pieces linked below are all creative, no doubt, but the first one strikes me more as a piece of journalism. I’ve decided to include it here because it had the same effect on me as a lot of fiction – there’s a clear narrative arc and a kind of surprise ending. Plus: my house, my rules.
All five are fantastic reads. Nonfiction by Laurie Penny, Anaïs Godard, and Cindy House, and fiction by Brittany Silveira and Stephen Woods.
I read Later by Stephen King this week – it ranks with his best. It’s under 300 pages, there’s no weird horniness and he sticks the ending.
Blood on the Forge should be a classic story of the Great Migration and the years before the Depression. It’s been largely forgotten but that’s unfair.
My Documents is one of those books that’s nailed the zeitgeist – a dystopian story of the American government rounding up undesirables in detention camps. I didn’t find it a great book, though.
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Nonfiction
‘I came out as autistic. Everyone said: That explains a lot’ By Laurie Penny
I don’t know if this counts as creative nonfiction, but I loved this read. Penny’s story is really something — it starts out as something almost lighthearted but there’s a lot of surprising turns here.
We chatted about how Instagram was always trying to sell her the oddest things. “I know,” I chuckled, “Facebook thinks I’m autistic!”
There was a silence. ‘‘I was wondering if we’d ever have this conversation,” said Mum.
An Open Letter to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Who Thinks My Daughter is a Tragedy by Anaïs Godard
McSweeney’s? The humour magazine? I’m used to reading brilliant writing there, but nothing like this. There’s nothing funny here and it’s one of the best things they’ve ever published:
When another child’s upset—before the adults notice, before the child even cries—she takes their hand. She leans her forehead against theirs, gently, like she’s checking for a fever only she can feel.
She doesn’t write poems.
She is one.
Chipmunk by Cindy House
This memoir by Cindy House is short and has an ending I’ll never forget:
…I called my husband’s cell phone, I said something like, Come home now, I am recovering from childbirth and holding our infant and do not have a spare limb or extra energy to chase a chipmunk out of the house,
Fiction
The Invisible Woman by Brittany Silveira
This portrait of a marriage hitting a rough patch is a stressful read. Silveira’s narrator rings so true that I thought for a long time this was creative nonfiction:
After marriage in our mid twenties, Henry focused on his career as a financial advisor, constantly searching for bigger and better things. Better pay, bigger office, prettier assistants. More schmoozing, more overtime, more overnight work trips. My unexpected loneliness turned into hunger—a hunger for whatever I could control: whittling down my body, maintaining a pristine house, feeding Henry delicious meals, throwing impressive dinner parties. Being the ultimate wife.
The Clown by Stephen Woods
The twists in this story were surprising in the moment, but on a closer read the clues were there all along. I’ve been thinking about this one for days:
When she opened the front door Jake stood there with his clown behind him. The clown wore a big full-cheeked smile, with the slightest bit of stubble pushing out through his makeup. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised, the clown always followed him everywhere, like a rainbow-coloured shadow, but for some reason she had expected him to show up alone this time.
