to be saddened and confused by this section in Waterstones

[SlightlyUndead]

I know this is going to come out wrong and I will probably get flamed...

There are now so many paperback biographies/ autobigraphies written by adults who were abused as children that it has it's own section on our local Waterstones. I remember seeing David Peltzer interviewed a few years ago when "A Child Called It" was first published. It was one of the first
bestsellers of this kind, the interview was harrowing and deeply upsetting and I understood that writing it down was a kind of therapy for him. If the process of writing a book about such awful experiences helps with the healing process in some way, I'm all for it. But what I don't really understand is the 'popularity' of such books. I did read 'A Child Called It' in the light of all the publicity and obviously found it very upsetting. I am not saying we should 'close our eyes' to such things but surely if you really care, you can donate to/do work for the NSPCC or Childline. I have seen mothers in the playground reading one of these books after another and I just can't help feeling that there is something a bit gratuitous (spelling?) and voyeristic about it. The more 'horrific' the childhood, the better read?

Oh this does seem to have come out a but wrong but what I am trying to say is that it seems that these books are now a reading genre in themeselves now and I just find it disturbing that there is an appetite for it. But then I don't ever read any 'gory details' in the newspaper if it involves children being hurt....

Maybe I am missing something? I am happy to have it explained to me.

I love whodunnits, but the torture inflation in them really repels me. It's like a competition as to who can think of the most disgusting, painful and degrading way to kill women. I think I'll stick with Miss Marple.

You are unreasonable to use the irritating and disingenuous word 'saddened'.

You are NOT unreasonable AT ALL for disliking this ghoulish genre that provides little more than titillation.

I call it Grief porn. I used to work for Waterstone's (for 7 years) and I can remember when Gits Sereney released her book about Mary Bell the manager actually wanted to put it in the 'true crime' section and then decided to sell it from beneath the counter. I suggested we may as well be providing brown paper bags to put it in!

In the past the True Crime section was what has now become 'painful lives' and i think it's a huge shame that Waterstone's would market it like this but then where else should they put it - popular psychology?

I used to manage the Biography section in the shop I wored in and it was full of lovely books about the lives of really interesting people, how things change. It's such a shame but it's what sells. Though I would think they sell more in places like Asda? Do people buy this kind of thing as holiday reading? Is any of it really true?

I agree with GetOrfMoiLand, there are so many really good books out there about difficult life experiences which don't have to sink to the depths of books like 'Please, daddy, no!'

YANBU
they are vile.
But as someone famously said about poetry 'Some people must like it, or nobody would write it.'

I hate the genre, but some of the titles are so bad they are hilarious. My husband seeks out (and makes up) particularly gratuitous ones to make me laugh. 'Ma, he sold me for a few cigarettes' is a personal favourite.

this is interesting. Linked to by poshwellies in another thread. this should make you laugh too .

I can't think of the authors name but she was a foster carer & now seems to be selling the stories of those she looked after that really iritates me

I read one by Tori Hayden that I found in the Oxfam shop - it's about her trying to teach a little girl with big learning difficulties though there's also some reference to her being from an abusive family. I felt really unpleasant when I found that these books are in with Misery Lit, and it looks (sadly, and Proud, I stand by 'sadly') as if the woman who writes them has got more and more voyeuristic as she goes along.

I didn't realize it was more than an account of her teaching experience with a struggling child. I really don't like the insidiousness of it - I suspect that publishers encourage writers to pile on the agony and it becomes competitive.

Bunty - same premise as everyone shuddering at Jordan but her shifting more magazines than all the other celebs put together

YANBU.

There is a section in Smiths too and I just walk straight past. I suspect some are made up and question the well being of someone making money out of writing their tragic stories.

Have mentioned it before- Adrian Mole's mother wrote a misery memoir called "A Child Called Shit".

YANBU - this is something I noticed too and it annoys me as well. No way will I ever read any of it!

They are not my sort of thing.

But I'd happily write one based on my life experiences if it would make me money - it would make up for them in some way.

It would be catathartic, piss my parents off, and allolw me to buy more shoes - what's not to like ?

It's interesting how many of them are totally made up. The readers are basically wanking over this stuff, whether metaphorically or indeed literally (Horrible sadistic nonce? Don't run the risk of arrest and exposure and dogshit through your letterbox by seeking out actual kiddy porn, get your jollies cheaply and safely with weekly trips to the high street bookshop...) Yet the ones who are getting a gratification from this awful crap that isn't sexual but is more about vicarious thrills and a smug sense that they must be doing something right with their own lives, would refuse to buy these books if they were marketed as ficiton, because reading stuff like this that someone has actually admitted to making up would make you, oo, a Bad Person. It;s all right if it's real, the thought process goes, because you're uuuh, Raising Awareness or something. You're learning from it and the fact that you might blubber and puke over the more graphic bits but carry on reading is a way of demonstrating how incredibly sensitive and caring you really are. It's the readers of this shit that circulate those endless fuckwitted poems and pointless 'campaigns' (If You Don't Repost This You Have No Heart. Etc). But they wouldn;t consider donating a few quid or a few hours a week to a children's charity...

I feel the same way about those 'Real Life' magazines that are so popular. Story upon harrowing story about people who have died tragically leaving very young families, families split apart by all sorts of horrors. It's beyond me why someone would want to read this stuff for entertainment.

Absolutely agree with you Solid...

I thought they were known as Misery Memoirs?

Cuppa: the proleporn mags do actually sometimes do something useful though in amongst the slobbering and shuddering. They often run campaigns for things like better school meals, help for victims of domestic violence, neighbourhood support groups etc.

I think it is Cathy Glass who writes about being a Foster Carer she did a Q and A on here once.

I hate this type of book and have only read A Child Called It and did think it was a bit .
My younger SIL reads them a lot though but then again when I was a teenager all I read was Flowers in The Attic and Heaven with a bit of Danielled Steele thrown in.

If there's a literary sand pit, I'm the woman with my head in it where mislit is concerned.

I think life throws enough shit at the average man without going out there and looking for other people's shit to mill through.

Give me something escapist and fanciful, something true and inspiring or something well written and quirky, but keep the pitiful stuff away from me.

Head, sand, me. Sorted.

minipen I think you mean Tori Hayden. There were rows of books by her. I find it extraordinary that you do something vocational like helping abused kids, then turn it into a lucrative 'brand'. So glad I am not alone. and at some of the names of the books. My 'favourite' to date was something in Waterstones along tge lines of 'A Special Kind of Grandpa'

YANBU

I'm shocked to see people reading them in public - do they not feel ashamed?

True crime books also. I worked with a girl who was obsessed with them. She brought a book into work one day which was, well, what I would describe as a 'picture book' of victims. Even thinking of it now (5 years on) makes me want to cry. It was truly horrendous.

It's appalling stuff. "Tragic Lives", I believe they call it in WHS. What with endless shelves of this, plus the dippy-hippy crystal-gazing "I love angels" shit on the "Mind, Body and Soul" shelves, there is less and less room for fiction, serious science, history and biographies.

Misery Memoirs are really awful - and they seem to have expolded on the bookmarket in recent years.

Angela's Ashes and The Aquariums of Pyongyang are the only ones I have read and they have both been really good - though more informative than weepy IMO.