I finished reading "Writing the Memoir- From Truth to Art" in one day. I do applaud Judith Barrington for the way in which she has shared her knowledge about writing non-fiction. The book is very well written in format along with being easy to read. Some of the "how to" books can turn a reader off if the author can't hold the reader's interest. Believe me, this book will hold your interest. I was very impressed with the detailed writing exercises included in each chapter. The chapters on getting started, finding form, telling the truth, developing sensory detail, writing about living people and steering clear of common pitfalls were excellent. Judith Barrington is to be commended for sharing a part of her personal heartache, as well as identifying herself to the reader. After reading this book written by JB, I not only felt I knew more about writing non-fiction, I felt like I'd known the author for a long time. I now plan to purchase her book "Lifesaving: A Memoir."

I've been through this book twice, highlighting and underlining the many useful phrases and tips. The emphasis is not only on the practical but also on the artful. Some chapters cover practical topics, such as finding the desired form and the difference between memoir and autobiography. Others offer ways to make the narrative more interesting by moving around in time and making the language more vivid by using one's senses. One chapter deals with the nitty problems of telling the truth in light of other peoples' sensibilities, and, when it comes to painful subjects, the difference between "wallowing" and "bearing witness." The author has included exercises as illustrations at the end of every chapter. I intend to read the book yet again before I start my memoir.

I have been telling my writing students to read this book since it first appeared. Barrington is herself a fine writer, known for her poems as well as her essays, and thus offers a model as well as solid advice/instruction for her readers. Most important for one who offers a guide not simply to writers, but specifically to those who choose to write memoir, she deals forthrightly with questions of truth, motive, ethics and responsibility - arenas often ignored or dealt with superficially, if not cavalierly. Her own recent memoir [Lifesaving] is a fine example of what writers may do when they approach both the craft and the art of memoir writing from the perspectives she offers in Writing the Memoir.

On December 24, 1963, during a Christmas voyage to the Canary Island, the cruise ship Lakonia, three days out of Southampton, caught fire. In the ensuing confusion and panic a small group of passengers, including Judith Barrington's parents, were left stranded without lifeboats and drowned. Barrington, just nineteen, left England and went to live in a small town in northern Spain. Lifesaving: A Memoir, is her story of those three years, of the people, the places, and a young woman struggling to become an adult in the shadow of sudden and staggering personal loss. Livesaving: A Memoir is a striking, candid, insightful, articulate, honest work that transcends mere autobiography to become a small jewel of enduring and memorable literature.

I found this book to be a beautiful account of loss that is written with originality, tenderness, and even humor. These qualities, filtered through the consciousness of Judith Barrington with her genius for astonishingly clear and honest writing, create a portrait of a girl who has lost her moorings and is trying to find a way to save herself. The memoir captures a time when "grief" was not a word anybody said publicly, certainly not in England. When she learns that her parents have died in a terrible accident at sea, Barrington escapes the emotional distance of the British in general and, in particular, her older siblings. She heads directly, though at the time unconsciously, for the place where her parents once spent their happiest times.From the moment we enter Spain, Barrington angles the light so that somehow we are under the intoxicating Spanish sun with her younger self--speeding along in her mother's MG through hilly terrain and meeting a cast of lovable, peculiar, and disturbing characters worthy of a great novel--and at the same time with her older self who is now wise enough to compassionately observe the deep sufferening she was experiencing at the time. She was not one of the flower children of the 1960s on an adventure to experiment with life, but a wholly intelligent and remarkable young woman who was trying to conceal (even from herself) an aching grief beneath a wild youthful attraction to trouble, sex, and danger. She writes every line like a poet, but the overall effect is like a novel. By the end, when she recounts how she finally allowed herself to enter the reality of her parents' deaths, I cried for her both in sadness and in joy.

I read Lifesaving - actually, it feels truer to say I went with Barrington to Spain, to her nineteen-year-old life, where I spent the weekend with her, mesmerized and attentive to all she experienced; every choice, each discovery. I feel awed and deeply affected. I am not a writer, but I can see and appreciate how creatively and beautifully Barrington structured her memoir. The places where she intertwines her body/experience with her mother's stunned me. In a way, I feel that the whole book allows the reader to do the same with her, so it becomes the readers' experience, too. It's been good to walk in the territory of the fear of grief with someone who got to the other side. I experience this as a gift of courage. Thank you, Judith Barrington.