A month of MEMOIRS

FORGET ALL THE VALENTINE’S DAY ROMCOMS; FEBRUARY IS BECOMING THE STRONGEST TIME OF THE YEAR TO RELEASE A MEMOIR. MEGAN CONNER ROUNDS UP FIVE OF THE BEST

Splinters by Leslie Jamison (Granta, £16.99, out 22nd February) Labelling this beautifully interwoven and unputdownable account from The New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams as a divorce memoir would be a gross oversimplification. In documenting the rebuild of her life after the collapse of her marriage, Jamison ponders everything from the hallmarks of her parents’ own complex relationship to her wild and absorbing love as a single mother to her young daughter, squishing layer upon layer of resonant truths into meticulously crafted paragraphs.

Grief Is For People by Sloane Crosley (Serpent’s Tail, £9.99, out 27th February)

This moving portrait of grief in the wake of Crosley’s best friend’s suicide begins with a break-in at her New York home a month before his death, and unspools during the Covid-19 pandemic as the essayist’s inescapable feeling of loss intensifies. Initially masking her despair with a dogged search for the stolen jewellery that her friend had admired, Crosley cleverly blends elements of a mystery thriller with memoir, dissecting grief and the many ways it presents itself while even managing to make you laugh.

Newborn by Kerry Hudson (Chatto & Windus, £18.99, out 1st February)

Five years on from Lowborn, the acclaimed 2019 memoir about her unstable childhood and growing up in poverty, Hudson reflects on her journey to creating her own family, without a healthy blueprint to work from, after decades of convincing herself that motherhood wasn’t a path she wanted to follow. From the strain that U-turn had on her marriage to the unrelenting desperation of trying to conceive, Hudson nails many parents’ innermost thoughts while asking if she can really give her son a different life.

Private Equity by Carrie Sun (Bloomsbury, £20, out 29th February)

In this gripping exploration of the toxic world of finance, Sun maps her path from daughter of Chinese immigrants to corporate success story, as she becomes the sole assistant and right hand to the billionaire founder of a US hedge fund at the age of 29. Pacy and economically written, Private Equity brilliantly strips back the gloss, detailing Sun’s own fast track to burnout while asking if our modern model of work is deeply flawed.

Mad Woman by Bryony Gordon (Headline, £20, out 15th February)

Few can observe mental illness with the reassuring warmth and candour of Gordon, who begins this sequel to The Sunday Times bestseller Mad Girl a decade on from where part one started, as the world dips into a global pandemic and she finds herself on the brink of perimenopause. Interspersing her narrative with listicles and snapshots from her iphone’s Notes app, Gordon injects lightness into the darkness as she recounts her relapse into OCD and subsequent steps to recovery.