Survival Stories: Memoirs of Crisis

Memoirs constructed around crises can easily spin out of control, free-falling to the level of tearjerking melodrama. Fortunately, most of the 22 pieces in Survival Stories, including contributions from such noted authors as Jamaica Kincaid and Isabelle Allende, bypass that sticky trap and carve crystalline beauty from raw anger, sorrow, and dread. Christopher Davis, whose work revisits the steps leading up to and away from the murder of his younger brother, finds crisis memoir a "way to transform pain back into love." Surely this is true for other contributors, too. Natalie Kusz retraces months spent in a children's hospital reconstructing her face after being mauled by a dog in Alaska. Her story and her mother's perspective emerge almost lazily in disarming counterpoint to their intensity. Christina Middlebrook tells of the effort she made to slip back into her soul after a bone marrow transplant, burning everything she had in the hospital except the inevitable memories. In an excerpt from Darkness Visible, William Styron conjures a wraithlike "second self" who watches dispassionately as he carefully wraps and discards his treasured writing notebook, a bow to the numbing depression pushing him toward suicide. Not every tale is dire, but each draws on different losses or hurts that befall us in life and may be of comfort to others walking these roads. --Francesca Coltrera