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Across the Page: Memoir

If you believe a writer should only pen a memoir if she has a truly interesting story to tell and can tell it honestly and sincerely, look no further than Little Chapel on the River: A Pub, a Town and the Search for What Matters Most by Gwendolyn Bounds; Nightlight: A Memoir by Janine Avril; and Michelle Tea’s classic The Chelsea Whistle.

Little Chapel on the River: A Pub, a Town and the Search for What Matters Most by Gwendolyn Bounds (Harper Paperbacks)

In the fall of 2001, journalist Gwendolyn (Wendy) Bounds thought she had it all: a job writing about fashion at the Wall Street Journal, an apartment in downtown Manhattan, and a beautiful girlfriend named Kathryn.

Then came Sept. 11, and everything changed. Bounds and Kathryn, who were forced to flee lower Manhattan that fateful morning, lost their home. Days later, after rescuing their cat from their condemned apartment building, they did what many other New Yorkers were forced to do: They began to search for a new home.

Little Chapel on the River is a record of that search, a journey that takes Bounds to Garrison, N.Y., a town by the banks of the Hudson River. What Garrison lacks in size – it’s so small it does not necessarily qualify for “official town status” – it makes up for in heart.

At the center of Garrison is the famous Guinan’s, a tiny Irish pub and country store. Bounds is immediately enchanted by the establishment – its rustic and comfortable setting, charming proprietor Jim Guinan and his children, and the distinctive patrons who are treated like family.

Needing more than just a new place to call home, Bounds also finds a family at Guinan’s. As New York and the country begin their slow recovery, she immerses herself in this new life, a life very different from the one she led in the city.

At the end of each chapter, Bounds includes a memory from her childhood, usually one about her grandfather. The vignettes are well-placed and offer insight into how her background informs her connection with Guinan’s, and with Jim in particular.

Bounds’ sexuality is not an issue in the small town, but her coming out to Jim is one of the more tender moments of the story. Because she doesn’t correct him the first time he asks how her “sister” is, she is unsure how to backtrack. (“Maybe he means ‘sister,'” Kathryn jokes.)

Finally, one afternoon while they’re alone watching TV, Bounds explains the relationship to Jim. “I swallow hard. Kathryn’s not my sister, you know, I tell him, feeling my face get hot. The next thought is habit: What if he doesn’t like me anymore? I’m a grown adult and this is still hard.”

Jim does accept her: “From that day on, whenever we see each other, Jim now makes a point to ask: ‘And how’s Kathryn?’ It’s a slight alteration of the question, but it says it all.”

In beautiful and lyrical prose, Bounds shows how moving to Garrison forces her to slow down and pay attention to both her interior and exterior worlds. She adopts a dog. She buys a house. She takes care of her neighbors and allows them to take care of her. She thinks about starting a family.

“This is the story of a place, the kind of joint you don’t find around much anymore,” Bounds writes, “a spot where people wander in once and return for a lifetime.” Little Chapel on the River is about the importance of home – not only the people in it, but the actual place.

Nightlight: A Memoir by Janine Avril (Alyson Books)

If Chapel on the River shows how strangers can become family, Janine Avril’s powerful Nightlight is about just the opposite.

“A secret is something told to protect you and, in many ways, it does. It shields you from that which will make your life more painful,” Avril writes in the beginning of her memoir. “On the other hand, that which you don’t know is still there, continually shaping your life.”

Nightlight is the story of Avril’s attempt to uncover her family’s secrets, no matter how painful. Barely a teenager when her mother dies of cancer, Avril is so numb from the loss that she can barely say goodbye. She is haunted by the guilt that she had been ashamed of her mother’s ailing body, a guilt her father does not allow her to escape: “I was filled with shame about my family, but far worse was the shame I felt toward myself.”

Shortly after her mother’s death, Avril’s father, a successful French chef and restaurateur, throws a “motherless Mother’s Day” party. He refuses to invite Avril’s maternal grandparents and instead fills the house with “topless women” and “pranc[es] around jovially in his skin-tight green Speedo.”

Avril is certain that her father is insane, but there is nothing she can do about it. Of course, the rift between the two is deeper than different methods of grieving. And when her father remarries, Avril is forced to accept that life has changed.

Throughout this difficult time, Avril is also falling in love with her best friend Nicole: “Sometimes I thought that all girls secretly liked girls in the way that I did. Other times I felt perverted, sick for the places I traveled in my fantasy world. I tried to push away my feelings but could not. Trying to will my desire away just intensified it.”

At Cornell Avril attempts to face her sexuality and the loss of her mother, but she slips into a profound and debilitating depression that leads her to consider suicide: “Jump. I dare you to jump. No one will miss you. There might be nothingness when you die and nothingness would be so much better than all of this.”

Just as Avril finally gets help, she learns that her father is sick with AIDS. She is confused. She doesn’t understand how her father contracted the disease and does not necessarily believe his hypotheses – a blood transfusion she doesn’t recall, a blood brothers’ pact with someone he knew had AIDS, a car accident where he helped one of the victims.

Avril deduces heroin but accepts that she will never know the real cause – that is, until she gets a phone call from her uncle five years after her father’s death and learns that the story is far more complicated and painful than she had suspected. The news challenges nearly everything Avril had thought she understood about her family, her parents and her childhood.

Nightlight is a deeply moving account of secrecy, loss and, ultimately, redemption. Avril’s voice is strong and compelling. Though the story of her family is certainly unique, the themes here are universal and powerfully rendered.

The Chelsea Whistle by Michelle Tea (Seal Press)

Michelle Tea’s The Chelsea Whistle is a stunning and unsentimental memoir about growing up in a small, rundown suburb of Boston. With characteristic rawness, Tea examines her childhood with insight, humor and grace.

Tea is not known for traditional storytelling, and The Chelsea Whistle is no exception. The fast-paced and multilayered narrative is easy to follow, though many passages begin with a meditation on one subject – how to play dead successfully, why people are racists, the lesbian nuns at her Catholic school – only to branch out into a whole new range of topics.

As Tea navigates the mean streets of Chelsea, she begins to develop her own aesthetic and style. She is often misunderstood, and her attempts to fit in at home, with her peers, or out in the world are both heartbreaking and hilarious. Her life, like that of most teens, is filled with contradictions. But one of the biggest issues she tackles is her sexuality.

For most of the book Tea recounts sleeping with both guys and girls until finally identifying as a lesbian: “I Just Think I Like Girls, I said, and that was that.” After breaking up with her boyfriend, she falls in love with Steph: “Steph was against everything. It was mesmerizing.”

Meanwhile, Tea and her sister suspect their stepfather may be spying on them in their bedrooms and in the bathroom. They have little proof, but when Tea’s younger sister Madeline gets the courage to confront him, it changes everything for the family.

Though the prose here is similar to that in Tea’s other books – including Valencia and The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in AmericaThe Chelsea Whistle is more complex and, in many ways, more accomplished. The book will be re-released this month. If you haven’t read it yet, you must.

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