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Home > Opinion > False Memoir Syndrome

False Memoir Syndrome

Posted at 12:15PM Thursday 20 Mar 2008

Given the outrage greeting the news that yet another memoir has proved less than verbatim, it is clear the public does not permit such liberties to those who claim to write from experience. And, on grounds of simple mis-selling, nor should it. Those trauma hucksters who manipulate the seemingly boundless appetite for tales of survival and redemption deserve to be held to account. Then again, in a market where true stories sell better, the urge to embellish is hardly surprising. Scanning the supermarket shelves that heave with misery memoirs, each detailing abuses and degradations more hideously imaginative than the last, I can only marvel at so many terrible childhoods.

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