At some level, they become possessed by their story. This book is an anthology of those worked-out stories.
The Examined Life is Grosz's first book. It is already something of a literary sensation, going to auction, selling into more than a dozen major markets before publication, getting picked as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week this week. He wrote it because the time felt right: That will, of course, be the vast majority, of course: A shrink, in Britain, remains something of a luxury, though none the less busy for that: That's maybe 50, hours of conversation so far; more than enough to keep him in stories.
Filmography
So what do Grosz's odd stories — of deceived wives, out-of-control children, lonely fathers, frightened daughters, hypocritical husbands, congenital liars, lovesick singletons, successful businessmen who inexplicably lose things — actually tell? They explain, for example, that people often use boredom as a form of aggression; that praising children too much can make them lazy later; that the present is the only time that's real — "The past is alive in the present The future is an idea in our mind now" — and that we are capable of telling ourselves all manner of lies in order not to face a truth.
Two main themes emerge. In fact, all change involves loss, and yet life itself is change — we are always giving up something for something else. For Grosz, Dickens's Scrooge — whose story he relates in a chapter titled How Lovesickness Keeps Us from Love — is "actually a great story of psychological transformation. We read it as a Christmas tale, but what Scrooge is doing is denying his losses: Instead, he counts his money, seeing only gains, not losses. The three ghosts haunt Scrooge with his unhappy past, show him a present in which the long-suffering Cratchits endure their losses but stay big-hearted, and his own inevitably bleak future.
Comorbidities of obsessive and compulsive symptoms in Huntington disease
What the ghosts do is gradually undo Scrooge's delusion that you can live a life without loss. Thereafter we mend ourselves, Grosz believes, "by repairing our relationship with the lost, by acknowledging that these were losses. We can find ourselves by facing truths about our lives and about these losses, by facing the truth about how our relationships with people really are, not how we'd like them to be.
Grosz — tall, kindly, courteous — was born in not far from Chicago, the son of an aspirational grocery store keeper from eastern Europe and an American-born painter. By 17, he knew where his interests lay: The latter, Grosz says, "enthralled me: That we could be disconnected from our selves and not know who we are. Studying psychology and politics at the University of California, Berkeley, he started applying analysis to try to understand politics — and looking at literature to understand psychology. The pivotal moment, he says, was two short stories: Bartleby the Scrivener, Melville's extraordinary tale of the copyist "who preferred not to", and Conrad's stowaway story The Secret Sharer: They made great emotional sense to me.
The key as he sees it, in writing as in psychoanalysis, is that quest for truth: Is that exactly how it was? You have to dig down really deep to make it good — but you're also after lightness.
Karen Gillan
You don't want to write about the Oedipus complex, you want to take weight out of the story. There were times that I thought about putting the book down. I made the mistake of starting this book when I didn't have an ocean of time ahead of me. Don't make the same mistake. Once you pick this book up, at the risk of sounding trite, you won't be able to put it back down. I'm not a huge fan of the true crime genre, exactly. I've enjoyed a true crime novel now and then, but it isn't a genre I reach for often. But that said, I know the transformative power of a truly well-written crime book. Truman Capote's In True Blood introduced me to the narrative non-fiction genre, and it completely changed my life.
I'll Be Gone in the Dark is the same kind of transformative book. It is the kind of genre-busting, heart-breaking, world-shaking book that will introduce a whole new generation of readers to the power of non-fiction done well.
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Not only does the pitch-perfect pace grab the reader by the wrist and pull them breathlessly along, but the book walks the line between memoir and true crime in a way that has never been done so flawlessly before. McNamara takes the reader on an emotional journal that is at times shocking, entertaining, joyful and devastating. I don't care if you are into true crime Audible Audiobook Verified Purchase. I'm writing this review of the Audible format of the book. I wasn't sure about buying it for Audible; I like listening to true crime podcasts during my long commute, but obviously a book means more hours of listening that you're committing to.
In the end, I'm glad I bought this format. The reader's voice is perfect: It might just be a little harder to follow than the print version, but I'm still with it, 11 chapters in. First, to everyone who angrily gave this book one star, and they are very angry for some reason, I'm posting Stephen King's words about this book: Those books have already been written and this fact is addressed by Michelle numerous times.
This book is about Michelle's time spent researching this case. So, of course, this book jumps around because it follows her and her research. She started this as notes for her website or podcast, and it grew from something she happened upon to something that she couldn't stop focusing on. She is a beautiful writer, and I was drawn into the story from the first page. The portions about her, including her childhood, at times feel like the reprieve from the darkness they were meant to be, but are not any less interesting.
I would read an entire book about the crime she referenced from her childhood. That brings me to why this book was at times hard to read, besides the obvious darkness of the subject matter. Many times when I'm reading, I find myself pausing to buy everything else the author has written. Of course that is not possible here, and many times while reading I thought about her family and friends and what a horrible loss they have suffered.
I highly recommend this book to any lover of true crime. See all 1, reviews. Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway. Set up a giveaway.
- INTRODUCTION.
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