Addicted To Misery
Alex Forsyth investigates the new genre of harrowing real life stories currently making the bestseller list
We are understandably apprehensive about criticising books dealing with non-fictional accounts of child abuse. Yet now that the market is glut with titles like Shamed, Damaged, Abandoned or Don’t Tell Mummy, and swathes of eager readers compile their ‘Top Ten Tragic Life Stories’ lists on the web, it is time to take a closer look at this genre. Are people really choosing these books in order to learn something new? Or are we as readers addicted to the twisted misfortunes of others?
In 2005, a last minute book purchase at Heathrow landed me with Dave Pelzer’s A Child Called “It”, one of the first misery-biographies. An enthused Amazon.com reviewer describes this disturbing tract as a “vivid memoir…which moved the world to appreciate the extent that child abuse can reach.” I assumed this was a literary glitch, a shocking whistleblower certainly; but ultimately a one-off. Yet I was forced to watch in disbelief as their popularity grew. A year later, they had even earned their own genre: ‘Tragic life stories,’ which is absurdly placed, without the slightest hint of irony, in the ‘Entertainment’ section in many big bookshops. Now it seems you cannot pass a bestsellers shelf without a parade of pastel-shaded children staring miserably at you from their front covers. They are unofficially known as “Misery Lit” – though let’s call them miseographies, if no-one has already coined that phrase.
The miseography movement was kickstarted by the success of Pelzer’s book in 1995, although the genre was arguably evidenced earlier. Since then, countless books have surfaced, each with their own “harrowing story of redemption.” The publisher Hodder deals with the majority of them but were silent when approached on the subject and did not return any emails. Their cover designs are comfortably homogeneous; usually a soft-focus photo of a child gazing into the distance from behind a title scrawled in a child’s handwriting. The titles range from Christopher Spry’s sentimental, Child C to Stuart Howarth’s unpleasant (but unintentionally darkly-comic) Please Daddy No!, followed by short descriptive taglines inevitably including the words “damaged”, “struggle”, “abandoned” and other equally emotive buzz-words. Each book purports to be more shocking, more harrowing or more inspirational then the last, anxiously trying to stand out from the miasma of misery and earn its place as a bestseller.
According to Kate Elton, of Arrow Books, the reason these miseographies are so popular is that they are “genuinely a testament to what the human spirit can endure. We all have problems in our lives. This is a way of putting things in perspective.”
This idea, that by reading these catalogues of abuse we would gain some inspiration for our own problems, is put forward by author and publisher alike to justify them. Yet it is hard to see what inspiration we may gleen from the graphic detailing of how “…she was the slave of her stepfather – in every way imaginable,” as detailed in the synopsis for Jane Elliot’s The Little Prisoner. Surely the most we stand to gain from reading such books is a gentle schadenfreude and a sense of relief that it is not happening to us; which might be charitably rephrased as ‘putting things in perspective’. The Observer columnist Carol Sarler believes the books are bought not for advice or for self-help, and show instead “that, as a nation, we seem utterly in thrall to paedophilia. We are obsessed with it. With these books we are wallowing in the muck of it. It’s all rather disgusting.”
Does veracity really matter? Should the reader demand their money back because a child was not actually abused?
I spoke to a victim of child abuse, who wished to remain anonymous, in an attempt to explore the concept of publishing books as a way of dealing with inner pain. “I know why people would maybe write it down in a diary or a letter,” he said, “I’ve done that. That can help. Once you have written it then it’s yours.” He offered some advice for those who might be in a similar position: “If you want to talk about it, find someone you trust, a support group or a close friend, someone you know is going to listen. Selling your stories won’t help you; though it might make you money.” I ask him whether he thinks publishing can be a redemptive or empowering process for the author. He laughs sarcastically; “Yeah, that’s why they publish 10 books – they want to be empowered 10 times.”
However, as public demand continues to grow, some authors have decided to be liberal with the truth. James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, a harrowing tale of drug abuse, was redubbed ‘a million little lies’ by the media when it turned out to be a fabrication. Interestingly, Frey had previously submitted it as fiction and had been rejected by publishers. It was only picked up when it was a ‘shocking true story’. Clearly verifying the testaments of these cases are difficult, but does veracity really matter? Should the reader feel cheated and demand their money back because a child was not actually abused? Many of the public did seek refunds, claiming to having felt cheated out of real life misery, causing Random?House to eventually pay out $2.35m in compensation.
So where next for miseography? Pippa Vaughan, from the Audiobooks Publishing Association, explained, “Publishers love them because they’re money-spinners, and the public’s appetite will ensure that they remain big business. I’m glad to say that the ‘misery’ genre hasn’t really found its way into the audiobook lists… Personally and professionally, I wouldn’t touch them.”
Less discerning publishers, however, show no signs of slowing, as a new sub-genre emerges that sweeps the problem of ‘truth’ under the carpet: the Fictional Misery Memoir. One such book, drawing publicity because of its recent film adaptation, is The Kite Runner. Written in the same testimonial style, the only difference between The Kite Runner and other novels is that it’s set in Afghanistan. How wonderfully topical.
The future seems bright for the miseography enthusiast. A new wave of sequels to the most disturbing classics are scheduled for release over the coming year. So while people anticipate Sebastian Faulks’ new Bond novel or the next McEwan, I will be on the lookout for Daddies Little Earner, Beyond Ugly and my personal favourite, My Lobotomy; A Memoir.
Loading ...
Thank You for the mention