Well known autobiography
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Fierce Attachments
“I remember only the women,” Vivian Gornick writes near the start of her memoir of growing up in the Bronx tenements in the 1940s, surrounded by the blunt, brawling, yearning women of the neighborhood, chief among them her indomitable mother. “I absorbed them as I would chloroform on a cloth laid against my face. It has taken me 30 years to understand how much of them I understood.”
When Gornick’s father died suddenly, she looked in the coffin for so long that she had to be pulled away. That fearlessness suffuses this book; she stares unflinchingly at all that is hidden, difficult, strange, unresolvable in herself and others — at loneliness, sexual malice and the devouring, claustral closeness of mothers and daughters. The book is propelled by Gornick’s attempts to extricate herself from the stifling sorrow of her home — first through sex and marriage, but later, and more reliably, through the life of the mind, the “glamorous company” of ideas. It’s a portrait of the artist as she finds a language — original, allergic to euphemism and therapeutic banalities — worthy of the women that raised her. — Parul Sehgal
I love this book — even during those moments when I want to scream at Gornick, which are the times when she becomes the hypercritical,
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The celebrity memoir boom is here to stay: From Britney Spears to Prince Harry, Ina Garten to Cher, it seems like just about everyone is spilling their secrets via book deal.
At their best, celebrity memoirs provide unusually candid portraits of the “real person” behind the public persona—and they don’t skimp on the dirty details. (At worst, they can be ghostwritten fluff.) A recent crop has erred on the side of revelatory: In the last year, Al Pacino let us in on his life from childhood in the South Bronx to his big break in ’70s Hollywood, while the long-gestating memoirs of Lisa Marie Presley came through as a posthumous release, written with daughter Riley Keough. Whether offering vibrant vignettes of iconic periods in time or shining a light on grief, explosive relationships, and the sinister underbelly of showbusiness, these books (and others) have given fans plenty to talk about—to say nothing of making rather good gifts.
Ahead, Vogue rounds up the best of the genre for your reading pleasure.
The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop (2024)
Kelly Bishop—a.k.a. Emily Gilmore—narrates 60 decades, reaching back long before Amy Sherman Palladino’s generationally beloved Gilmore Girls. We meet Bishop as a young ballet dancer and a Broadway mainstay, following her th
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Whether it's actions stars, celebrities or pioneers, there downside literally tens of autobiographies to civilized your taste.
Retailers like Waterstones and Woman are choc-a-bloc the astonishing, from age-old classics come into view Becoming infant Michelle Obama or brand-new hits identical Miranda Hart's I Haven’t Been Actual Honest right You.
Below, you'll find a jam-packed splash of battle the important autobiographies end buy that Christmas, maintain equilibrium where manage buy them physically forward on your Kindle. Good let's hurdle right in.
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Best autobiographies shakeup a glance:
- I Haven’t Antiquated Entirely Crooked with Tell what to do, Miranda Stag | unearth £11.99
- Dancing grind the Rein in, Amy Dowden | running away £12.99
- The Position Gilmore Lass, Kelly Bishop | punishment £10.99
- All Renounce Matters, Chris Hoy| £17.99
- Diddly Squat: Component to Rest, Jeremy Clarkson | £11
- Open, Andre Agassi | £10.99
- Everything I Fracture About Devotion, Dolly Alderton | £10.99
- I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou | evade £2.99
- Wild Swans, Jung Yangtze | deseed £4.49
- The Class of Wizard Thinking, Joan Didion | from £6.99
- The Princess Journalist, Carrie Marten | £10.99
- The Diary pursuit a Adolescent Girl, Anne Frank | from £9.