“COMPANION MEMOIRS” is a new phrase to me. I’ve read books about the same topic that were published by different people, of course, as well as varying accounts of the same incident. My sister and I have an entirely different take on, oh, pretty much every day of our childhoods, finally agreeing that the proper analysis for this is that we are different because we grew up in the same household, not despite that fact. So I’m versed in this she said/she said aspect of life. And then I got a real surprise in a pair of just-published books from Chronicle.
Elena Dunkle had battled anorexia nervosa for quite a while when she and her mother, the author Clare B. Dunkle, took on the idea of writing about a teen’s life with the illness. The product of that collaboration is Elena Vanishing: A Memoir. Clare simultaneously wrote Hope and Other Luxuries: A Mother’s Life with a Daughter’s Anorexia. Both were just published by Chronicle, thus the term, “companion memoirs.” Got someone with whom you share a story? Here’s your moment.
I caught up with this news in a recent Publishers Weekly piece about the Dunkle’s dual memoirs. Have a look. Want more? Listen to the Dunkles on the Diane Rehm Show.
