I feel like the integrity of memoir as a genre has cropped up a bit lately. I mentioned it in my review of Unquiet (Ullmann classes her book as a blend of fiction and memoir) but before that, I was discussing it with a friend who saw Leslie Jamison speak about her memoir, Splinters, which focuses on the break-up of her marriage. I haven’t read Splinters yet, but my friend said that Jamison emphasised the importance of not casting her ex wholly as the bad guy, that in memoir you had to show the ‘good bits’ as well, or risk losing the trust of your readers.
I had that in mind as I began journalist Kate Legge’s memoir, Infidelity and Other Affairs. It’s also about her marriage, which eventually ended after her husband had an affair. In terms of my curiosity about portraying the ‘bad guys’ in memoir, I was rewarded early in the book:
When he read an early draft of this story, he got up from the table and left the house to go for a walk. Too judgemental, was his response. He was right. He has strong views that buttress his behaviour and tame the guilt, and he’s crafted a narrative to protect his character. I admire his unflinching tolerance of my blowtorch.
But props to Legge – for letting him read a first draft, and for (perhaps) responding to his feedback.
The first half of the book explores infidelity, both how it impacted her own marriage but also how infidelity could be traced through generations of her husband’s family. The implication is ‘do we inherit unfaithfulness’? It’s an interesting idea, and Legge explores it from various angles, including drawing on material from infidelity gurus, Esther Perel and Dan Savage (although she notes that she didn’t consult either of these specialists when ‘…infidelity mowed me down in the hallway of my home’).
She begins with exploring the tyrannical nature of lust –
Nothing is sacred or beyond the pale once the wick is lit.
And moves on to the waves of emotion that hit her in the months that followed discovering her husband’s affair.
Recovery from the blow of deceit often begins with the razor blade of revenge.
Legge didn’t take revenge – despite the betrayal, she still loved her husband. They tried to salvage their marriage.
Distrust is a hard burden to shift and a burdensome guilt to shoulder.
In the second part of the book, Legge continues the theme of inheritance, and looks at mental health more broadly, focusing on her own brother, mother and an uncle. The last part of the book is made up of a handful of essays, topics ranging from owning cats and social media, to smoking pot and hiking.
Legge’s writing is excellent – engaging and clear-sighted – but I sincerely wish it had been published as a short volume on infidelity. The essays at the end felt like filler – that’s not to say they weren’t interesting, but they were completely out-of-sync with the first half of the book. The flame fizzled out.
A last word on memory –
Memory is an unreliable magnifier. The bizarre and the unsettling sear themselves into our early consciousness. The splintered gate post. The shattered vase. The slap. The argument. The drunken tirade. The lipstick-smeared face. We are less likely to dwell on the benign lulls in between.
3/5
On her brother, Legge writes –
Mum died when he was twenty. Their relationship was caustic but her departure halved his defence team. Dad shouldered him for another forty years but his shock absorbers wore thin… in the last years of Dad’s life, their interactions whittled down to a weekly thirty minutes, or for as long as it took them to devour Dad’s Saturday lunch plate of smoked salmon and salad. Dad was a creature of habit but he’d also given up trying to please his son.
As part of the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge, I’m comparing the Belfast summer and Melburnian winter. The results for the day I finished this book (June 6): Belfast 7°-14° and Melbourne 9°-17°.