It's the voyeur in me, maybe. Or the years spent as a newspaper reporter. But for whatever reason, I am fascinated by the lives of others. And you are, too, I bet. Memoir has been a popular genre for years — since "Angela's Ashes"? Since "The Liar's Club"? Since "The Confessions of St. Augustine"?
Here are three memoirs that have captivated me lately.
"Ghost Songs," by Regina McBride. (Tin House, 297 pages, $15.95.)
This stark, graceful memoir opens in a psych ward where McBride has landed, at age 18, after a mental collapse. And no wonder — her father has committed suicide, her mother has committed suicide, and she is haunted by their ghosts. The ghosts are so real — they lie on her bed, they stand in the doorway, they follow her from place to place — that McBride is terrified. She shuts her eyes, refuses to look.
An Irish Catholic, she cannot fathom what her parents have done. "Suicide is the worst sin," she tells the doctor. "That's the one that can't be forgiven."
"Ghost Songs" follows her collapse and shaky rebirth. It is written not in chronological order but in brief, vivid fragments (a paragraph, a page) that bounce around in time, slowly revealing the tormented, the happy, the tragic.
Over time, McBride follows her demons to her parents' native Ireland, where she begins to heal.
Like the writer's troubled, doomed parents, this moody memoir will haunt you.