My participation in Nonfiction November, like Novellas in November and MARM, tends to be a bit random and sporadic. Last year, I wrote one post for Nonfiction November. I will do the same this year, focusing on two of the questions – My Year in Nonfiction and Book Pairings. These are the two that most interest me.

Week 1: Your year in Nonfiction

Heather (Based on a True Story) hosted this week, which is described as follows:

Celebrate your year of nonfiction. What books have you read? What were your favorites? Have you had a favorite topic? Is there a topic you want to read about more?  What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

This Nonfiction November year runs, by my definition, from 1 November 2024 to 31 October 2025. My nonfiction reading has been varied, though most of it involved some sort of life writing – biography, memoir, and hybrids of the two. These books were, in alphabetical order by author, with links to my reviews or posts where applicable:

• Sarah Ailwood, “Austen’s Men, Immortality and Intertextuality” (2023, essay, read for a Jane Austen group meeting)
• Wayne Bergmann and Madelaine Dickie, Some people want to shoot me (2024, co-written biography, my review)
• Ruby Doyle, “A bush picnic” (1933, newspaper column, read for my post on Doyle)
• Helen Garner, The season (2024, memoir, my review)
• Gideon Haigh, My brother Jaz (2024, memoir, my review)
• Marion Halligan, Words for Lucy (2022, memoir, my review)
• Andra Putnis, Stories my grandmothers never told me (2024, biography/memoir, my review)
• Helen Trinca, Looking for Elizabeth: The life of Elizabeth Harrower (2025, biography, my review)
• Sonia Voumard, Tremor (2024, memoir, my review)

I am currently reading two other nonfiction works, including Hazzard and Harrower: The letters by Brigitta Olubas and Susan Wyndham (see my author conversation post) which I started last year. What I’ve read so far provided some good background for Trinca’s biography of Elizabeth Harrower.

I won’t answer the rest of the questions, except to say that my favourite nonfiction includes literary biography and memoir, and narrative nonfiction on any subject that I think might be interesting!

Week 3: Book Pairings

Liz (Adventures is Reading, Running and Working from Home) hosts this week, and explains it thus:

Pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title (or whatever you want to pair up). Maybe it’s a historical novel and the real history in a nonfiction version, or a memoir and a novel, or a fiction book you’ve read and you would like recommendations for background reading. Or two books on two different areas have chimed and have a link. You can be as creative as you like!

This is my favourite part of Nonfiction November, because, like the #SixDegrees meme, it’s fun to think about. I’m giving you three pairs. My rule was that the nonfiction book had to come from this year’s reading, but the paired book could – and indeed all do – come from previous years.

Grandmothers’ stories

This year my reading group read Andra Putnis’ biography/memoir, Stories my grandmothers didn’t tell me (my review) about her two Latvian grandmothers who survived World War Two and ended up in Australia. Five years ago, we discussed Favel Parrett’s novel There was still love (my review), which revolves around the lives of two Czech sisters, who also survived World War 2, but here one ends up in Australia while the other remains in Prague. Parrett tells her story mainly through the eyes of their grandchildren. 

Mining and land rights in Western Australia

Wayne Bergmann and Madelaine Dickie’s biography Some people want to shoot me (my review) tells the story of First Nations man Wayne Bergmann who has spent much of his life fighting for the rights of Traditional Owners. One of those fights documented in this book occurred when he was chief executive of the Kimberley Land Council during the James Price Point gas hub negotiations which saw conflict within First Nations communities and between them and the wider Broome community. Madelaine Dickie’s novel Red can origami (my review) is set in a fictional community in the same region and encompasses a similar story of conflict, negotiation, tested loyalties and skulduggery over a uranium mining licence.

Youth football

This pairing of Helen Garner’s memoir The season (my review) with Karen Viggers’ novel Sidelines (my review) is a bit looser than the previous two, but I’m going there. Both are Australian books about young people playing sport, and in both the sport is football. However, in Garner’s memoir the football is Australian Rules, while in Viggers’ novel it’s soccer (or, in fact, to many, “the” football). Also, Garner focuses on the positive aspects. Hers is a grandmother’s story. She wanted to get to know her grandson better so she followed him through a year of training for and playing games. It’s primarily about the relationship she developed with her grandson through doing so, but does include some insights into youth sport, mostly in terms of its benefits. Viggers’ novel, on the other hand, sets out specifically to interrogate what happens when parental support turns into pressure, and what that pressure can do to the young players experiencing it.

What would you pair (and/or do you have anything to share regarding your year in nonfiction)?

My participation in Nonfiction November tends to be sporadic. Last year, I wrote some weekly and some combined posts, but I did address the weekly questions conscientiously. However, the prompt questions are, I think, much the same this year and my answers would be very similar, so I’m not going to be as thorough this post. I will just respond to Week 1 (My year in nonfiction) and Week 3 (Book pairings) because the responses to these will be different every year.

Week 1: Your year in Nonfiction

Heather (Based on a True Story) hosted this week, which is described as follows:

Celebrate your year of nonfiction. What books have you read? What were your favorites? Have you had a favorite topic? Is there a topic you want to read about more?  What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

This Nonfiction November year runs, by my definition, from 1 November 2023 to 31 October 2024. My nonfiction reading has been varied, though much of it did involve some sort of life writing – biography, memoir, and hybrids of the two. Two biography-memoir hybrids that I enjoyed this year were specifically related to the literary biography field that is my favourite type of nonfiction. The books were Anna Funder’s Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s invisible life (2023, my review) and Nell Stevens’ Mrs Gaskell and me: Two women, two love stories, two centuries apart (2022, my review). Both had personal – hmm, agendas is too strong a word so – drivers behind their author’s decision to write about the life of their subject.

Late last year, I posted on my brother Ian Terry’s book, Uninnocent landscapes (my post). It’s a truth-telling project for which Ian followed the journey taken by George Augustus Robinson on his 1831/32 Big River Mission (brief description), which was a poorly conceived attempt to conciliate between settler and Aboriginal Tasmanians. In his book Ian accompanies his photographs with excerpts from Robinson’s text.

I did read other nonfiction, but I’ll end with two, one that I finished and one I’m currently reading. The finished one is Richard Flanagan’s Question 7 (my review). It was a great read; it stimulated an excellent reading group discussion; and it has just won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, which is worth £50,000. (As some of you may have heard – see The Guardian – Flanagan said in his acceptance speech that he would not accept the prize money “until the fund manager shares a plan to reduce its investment in fossil fuel extraction and increase investments in renewables”. This is putting your money where your mouth is. I applaud him.)

The one I’m currently reading – slowly, between other books – is Hazzard and Harrower: The letters by Brigitta Olubas and Susan Wyndham (see my author conversation post). It is an engrossing mix of personal life “stuff”, and observations on such things as politics at the time (such as Watergate in the USA and the election of Whitlam in Australia) and writers and writing. I’ve just enjoyed some discussion about criticism, which reminded me of that panel I attended at the Canberra Writers Festival. The panel discussed, for example, the idea that criticism can be a work in its own right. Shirley Hazzard, on the other hand, writes to Elizabeth Harrower that “I rarely read criticism, and have little interest in it as a genre [my emph.], only for the occasional statement or essay that rings true and wants books to be good, rather than showing relief & satisfaction when they’re not”.

Week 3: Book Pairings

Liz (Adventures is Reading, Running and Working from Home) hosts this week, and explains it thus:

Pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title (or whatever you want to pair up). Maybe it’s a historical novel and the real history in a nonfiction version, or a memoir and a novel, or a fiction book you’ve read and you would like recommendations for background reading. Or two books on two different areas have chimed and have a link. You can be as creative as you like!

This is my favourite part of Nonfiction November, because, like the #SixDegrees meme, it’s fun to think about. I’m giving you three pairs.

Reconciliation and truth-telling

I’ve already mentioned Ian Terry’s Uninnocent landscapes. Essentially, it looks at colonialism’s impact on country, through photographs of the landscape today, excerpts from the historical record, and essays by First Nations Tasmanians and a farmer living on the land. I will pair this with Melissa Lucashenko’s first work of historical fiction, Edenglassie (my review) in which she asks, among other things, what if colonialism had been done differently.

Letter-writing

I can’t resist pairing Brigitta Olubas’ and Susan Wyndham’s Hazzard and Harrower: The letters with Jane Austen’s epistolary novel Lady Susan (my review). I know, I’m shameless – any opportunity to mention my Jane!

Genre-bending

The Guardian article mentioned above describes Richard Flanagan’s Question 7 as “part-memoir, part-novel, part-history”. If that’s not a genre-bending work of nonfiction I don’t know what is. So, I thought to pair it with a genre-bending work of fiction (or, at least, not nonfiction), but which one? I think Evelyn Araluen’s Dropbear (my review) is the perfect match. Winner of the 2022 Stella Prize, it is a collection that combines poetry and prose/memoir, and that, like Flanagan’s work, draws from Araluen’s own life to ask questions that are well worth asking.

What would you pair (and/or do you have anything to share regarding your year in nonfiction)?

Once again, I am combining my Nonfiction November weeks because this month has been very busy personally as well as blog-wise.(I did Week 1, on its own, and then combined Weeks 2 and 3).

Nonfiction November is hosted by several bloggers, each one managing one of the weeks. This year, Week 4 – Worldview Shapers is hosted by Rebekah at She seeks nonfiction, and Week 5 – New to my TBR, by Lisa at Hopewell’s Library of Life.

Worldview Shapers

This week the questions relate to the fact that

One of the greatest things about reading nonfiction is learning all kinds of things about our world which you never would have known without it. There’s the intriguing, the beautiful, the appalling, and the profound. What nonfiction book or books have impacted the way you see the world in a powerful way? Is there one book that made you rethink everything? Do you think there is a book that should be required reading for everyone?

“Everyone” is a big call but I’m going to say it anyhow. I believe that, in the interests of truth-telling (or, is it, truth-receiving) that everyone in Australia should read more First Nations authors, fiction and non-fiction. I have read a few that I’d recommend, starting with this year’s standout read, Debra Danks’ We come with this place (my review), which I have already written about a couple of times this Nonfiction November. As I wrote in my last post, through it, I learnt new things about First Nations history and culture; I better understand this history and culture, particularly in terms of connection to Country; and, as a result, I can better explain and defend my support for First Nations’ people’s fight for fairness.

So, I thought I would add two more books on the topic that I have read in recent years, books that are readable, confronting but also generous in outlook, like Stan Grant’s Talking to my country (my review) and Anita Heiss’s Growing up Aboriginal in Australia (my review). I have read other First Nations nonfiction, but these two provide excellent introductions to the experience of living as a First Nations person in Australia.

Although written by an old-ish white man, my brother Ian Terry, I’d like to add to this list his book published this year, Uninnocent landscapes (my post, review to come), which is part of his truth-telling journey on the impact of colonialism on the Australian landscape, and thus, by extension, on First Nations Australians.

New to my TBR

Our instruction is obvious, to identify any nonfiction books that have made it onto our TBRs through the month (and noting the blogger who posted on that book).

I’m sorry, but I tried very hard not to be tempted as I have a pile of nonfiction books already on my TBR and I’ve read so very few of them this year. I was intrigued though by Patrick Bringley’s All the beauty in the world: A museum guard’s adventures in life, loss and art posted by Frances (Volatile Rune). I love going to museums and galleries, and often wonder about those people who stand guard in the various rooms. Do they like their job? Are they interested in the collections they are guarding? How do they cope with being on their feet for so long? Bringley apparently answers these questions, and many more, including some I hadn’t thought of.

I am also hoping to read in the next few months two recent Aussie nonfiction books, Anna Funder’s Wifedom (which Brona has reviewed), and Richard Flanagan’s just published Question 7. I think that’s more than enough to keep me out of mischief.

A big thanks to the bloggers who ran Nonfiction November this year. I wasn’t as assiduous as I could have been, but I did appreciate reading the bloggers I did get to, and I enjoyed taking part on my own blog in the little way I did.

Any Worldshapers for you? Or, new nonfiction must-reads?

My participation in Nonfiction November has been sporadic, but this year I have done Week 1, and am now combining Weeks 2 and 3, partly because there’s an element of repetition in my Week 2 responses.

Nonfiction November is hosted by several bloggers. This year, Week 2 – Choosing Nonfiction is hosted by Frances at Volatile Rune, and, my favourite, Week 3 – Book Pairings, by Liz at Adventures in Reading, Running and Working from Home.

According to the plan, Week 2 finished last Friday (10 November), and Week 3 commences tomorrow (Monday 13 November), so I am dragging the chain for the first and jumping the gun for the second, by posting today, Sunday 12 November.

Choosing Nonfiction

This week the questions relate to what sort of nonfiction we like to read. My answers will mostly be known to regular readers here, but there are some new twists on the questions.

What are you looking for when you pick up a nonfiction book?

Depending on the book and the topic, I am looking to learn something new, to increase my understanding of something I already know, and/or to have my perspective challenged (which might result in my changing that perspective, or, being able to better defend it.) The two books I named in my Week 1 post – Debra Danks’ We come with this place (my review) and JD Vance’s Hillbilly elegy (my review) – satisfied at least one of these criteria.

Dank’s book, in fact, satisfied all three – I learnt new things about First Nations history and culture; I better understand it, particularly in terms of connection to Country; and, as a result, I can better explain and defend my support for First Nations’ people’s fight for fairness.

Do you have a particular topic you’re attracted to?

I haven’t changed from what I’ve said before, which is that my overriding interests are literary biographies/memoirs, nature writing, and works about social justice/social history (which includes First Nations history and decolonisation, climate change and feminism.)

This year, as you already know, I’ve read very little nonfiction, but those I’ve read have been memoirs in the social justice/social history area.

Do you have a particular writing style that works best?

For want of a better word, I enjoy what is broadly called creative or narrative nonfiction. Because I love fiction, I like the writing to be engaging and evocative, which tends to mean writing that draws on some of the techniques of fiction to tell a nonfiction story. This does not mean playing with the facts, but making the facts, shall we say, accessible. Where a case is being argued, I want it to be clear and logical, not characterised by academese or jargon that is understood only by those in the know.

While this question doesn’t specifically ask it, I also like, where it’s appropriate, to know what sources have been used (either through an author’s note or footnotes/endnotes), and I LOVE an index. I know indexing is expensive, but, unless you are reading an eBook with search functionality, the value of a nonfiction book can be seriously diminished by the absence of an index.

When you look at a nonfiction book, does the title or cover influence you? If so, share a title or cover which you find striking.

I wouldn’t say I am influenced by titles and covers, because with nonfiction – for me, anyhow – content or subject matter is queen. However, this is not to say that a good titles and beautiful covers don’t enhance the experience, because they do.

Debra Dank’s We come with this place is a powerful title. It categorically announces that First Nations people were always here, that is, they WERE HERE when the settlers/invaders arrived. More than that, it suggests they are an intrinsic part of, if not essential to, this place. WE. COME. WITH. THIS. PLACE.

By brother Ian Terry’s book, Uninnocent landscapes, also has a strong title (but I will discuss that in my review). The book’s design and its cover are also glorious. The cover is striking in a minimalist restraint that also happens to be literal, in that it depicts Robinson’s journey that Ian followed.

Book Pairings

Our instruction is to “pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. Maybe it’s a historical novel and the real history in a nonfiction version, or a memoir and a novel, or a fiction book you’ve read and you would like recommendations for background reading. You can be as creative as you like! “

Okay, so my creativity will extend to two pairings:

Nonfiction read this year, paired with fiction from any year

Debra Dank, We come with this place with Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (my post). For a start, both books are set in neighbouring parts of northeast Australia, just south of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Secondly, both convey, in powerfully descriptive ways, the catastrophic dislocation experienced by First Nations peoples when they are separated from Country and/or when they are not able to interact with Country in the ways that are essential to their (and Country’s) wellbeing.

Fiction read this year, paired with nonfiction from any year

I have read a lot of First Nations and other non-white/BIPOC fiction this year, but I’ve already focused on First Nations writing in the post, so I’m changing tack, and am pairing Edwina Preston’s Bad art mother (my review) with Jane Sinclair’s memoir Shy love smiles and acid drops (my review), which I read early last year. Preston’s novel was inspired by several Australian artists (visual artists and writers) including the story of Sunday and John Reed’s adoption of Joy Hester’s son Sweeney. Jane Sinclair’s parents were part of the Reeds’ Heide Circle, and in her book Sinclair includes letters written by her mother to Sunday Reed, which include discussions of Sweeney. These are just two of the books I’ve read which deal with or reference in some way Heide. There are many more I haven’t read, as this Circle was not only fascinating but one of the most influential in Australia’s arts history, particular in terms of Modernism.

What would you pair (and/or do you have anything to share regarding the first questions)?

My participation in Nonfiction November has been sporadic, until last year when I managed to complete the whole series. Maybe I will again this year, maybe I won’t. We’ll see.

Nonfiction November, as most of you know, is hosted by several bloggers. This year, Week 1 – Your Year in Nonfiction is hosted by Heather at Based On A True Story, with variations on the usual first week questions.

But, here’s the thing. As we come to the end of 2023, I’m having to come clean on what a strange reading year I’ve had. You will hear more in my end-of-year roundups, but by then you’ll have had inklings from posts like this! Last year, I wrote for this post that I’d read about 25% more nonfiction than I’d read in each of the preceding few years. Last year’s (that is for 2022) non-fiction reading had comprised 45% life-writing, 45% essays, with the rest being “other” non-fiction. This year, since the end of last November, I have read only TWO nonfiction works and both have been memoirs.

What were your favorites?

The two books are Debra Dank’s We come with this place (my review), and JD Vance’s Hillbilly elegy (my review). We are asked to name our favourites, which is always tricky for me, as I don’t tend to think in terms of “favourites”. Both these books provided truly fascinating insights, albeit in diametrically opposed directions. Dank is a First Nations Australian writer who conveys with impressive clarity just how the interconnectedness between her people, the ancestors and Country works, and how that translates into knowing Country, while Vance was a poor white hillbilly from Kentucky who is now a Republican politician and, last I heard, a Trumpian. You won’t be surprised I think to hear me say that while I found Vance enlightening in terms of contemporary US politics, Dank’s book is by far my favourite. She bowled me over with her generosity.

Have you had a favourite topic, and Is there a topic you want to read about more? 

I’m bundling there two questions together because clearly I didn’t review enough nonfiction this year to have a favourite topic, but what I’d like to read more are books on my favourite interests areas – literary biographies, nature writing, and works about social justice/social history.

I have several literary biographies, in particular, on my TBR, so maybe next year I’ll have a fuller report to make. In terms of the third area – social justice/social history – I must say that reading more nonfiction from First Nations writers, like Debra Danks’ book, is what interests me right now.

What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November? 

As I wrote last year, I am not looking for more recommendations – not because I am not interested but because I have too much on my TBR already without adding to the pile (physical and virtual). However, I always like book talk, and the book talk I most like is that which focuses on areas that interest me (see above), and which talks about wider issues like why do we read nonfiction, what do we look for, and what makes a good nonfiction read?

What do you think?

Week 5 on Nonfiction (November 28-Dec 2) is all about what’s New to My TBR, and is hosted by Jaymi (The OC Bookgirl). To be honest, I wasn’t going to play along for this week in which we are supposed to list the books that have made it onto our TBRs from those bloggers have been shared over the month. This is because Last year, for example, I listed EIGHT books in my “New to my TBR” post, and have so far read just one, Gabrielle Carey’s Only happiness here (my review). I rest my case …. However …

Newly found on my TBR

In Week 1, two books were recommended to me on my post, that I knew I would want to read. Indeed, they sounded a bit familiar, one in particular. Funny that, because when I returned home from Melbourne in the middle of the month, and looked at the TBR next to my bed – you know, those books that you hope you’ll read soon – there these two were.

The one I was fairly confident I had was recommended by Australian novelist and feminist Sara Dowse, who has herself appeared several times on my blog. The book she recommended was Susan Varga’s Hard joy: Life and writing. I have reviewed a couple of Susan Varga’s books too – her memoir Heddy and me, and her poetry collection, Rupture – so I am confident that with Sara Dowse’s recommendation and my past enjoyment of Varga’s work, that I will also like this.

The other I was less sure about, but had started to suspect I might have it too. It was recommended by another Australian writer who has appeared several times on my blog, Carmel Bird. She recommended an author I’d never read before, but the topic of his book sounded right up my alley, as Carmel Bird knew – books, nature and words. The book is Gregory Day’s Words are eagles: Selected writings on the nature & language of place. Nature, language and place … this book of essays looks perfect for me.

The reason I have both books is that I advanced ordered them from the relatively new publishing company Upswell. Their inventory is so appealing and I’ve ordered/subscribed to several over the two years of their existence, but have not managed to read them because of the backlog of review copies I have. So, here I’m going to say that I’ve decided that I am going to find a better balance in my reading between the review pile – albeit there are many there I want to read – and those books I have bought because I have specifically chosen them. My next twelve months is going to be very busy as I prepare to downsize and sell our family home of the last 25 or so years and move into something smaller, but, after that, I am very hopeful of having MORE time to read. Yay that!

Eyes bigger than …

Otherwise, I must admit that I’ve jotted down very few other bloggers’ nonfiction reads – not because I wasn’t interested but because I knew I could not justify adding them to my list. However …

Melanie (Grab the Lapels) made these recommendations, with comments, on my Stranger than fiction post:

• Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman’sSounds like Titanic: this one is a hoot
• Lee Israel’s Can you ever forgive me?: this one made me hang my mouth open
• Bruce Goldfarb’s 18 tiny deaths: The untold story of Frances Glessner Lee and the invention of modern forensics: this one surprising because I thought there were more forensic pathologists
• Janice Erlbaum’s Have you found her?: this one I would love to tell you about but do not want to spoil it.

There were several books in the Worldchangers week, in particular, that also grabbed my reluctant attention, but I’ll just bring a couple to your attention:

Symeon Brown’s Get rich or lie trying, which Liz Dexter described as “an exposé of the world of internet influencers, or rather those who try desperately to monetise their lives for various reasons, including hauling themselves out of poverty, and who are used and abused by companies who know their desperation”.

Alone in the kitchen with an eggplant: Confessions of cooking for one and dining alone, a collection of essays edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler, which Lou said “helped me to see cooking and eating alone as a privilege and a mark of independence, not a lonely activity”. Many of us either live alone or could very well one day find ourselves alone … this is a great thing to appreciate.

If you are doing Nonfiction November, I‘ll probably see your recommendations. But, if you’re not, do share if any books recommended by bloggers have grabbed your attention this month.

Week 4 of Nonfiction November(November 21-25) is themed Worldview Changers, which is a new one I think for the month. I like this, as it is always good to have a new challenge. It is hosted by Rebekah @ She Seeks Nonfiction and is described as follows:

One of the greatest things about reading nonfiction is learning all kinds of things about our world which you never would have known without it. There’s the intriguing, the beautiful, the appalling, and the profound. What nonfiction book or books has impacted the way you see the world in a powerful way? Do you think there is one book that everyone needs to read for a better understanding of the world we live in?

Second question, first. The book I think that everyone should read for a better understanding of the world we live in is …

Jess Hill’s See what you made me do: Power, control and sexual abuse (my review). This was a powerful read that I took many, many months to read, after it won the 2020 Stella Prize. It wasn’t so much a worldview changer, for me, because I knew (who doesn’t?) that domestic abuse was going on, but it was certainly eye-opening. While I knew, for example, a lot of it in theory, and had seen many news reports of abuse and violence, the actual stories were gut-wrenching – particularly in the discussion of coercive control, in the levels of abuse of First Nations women, and in the way children are used. The most eye-opening thing was the court system and how the courts too often focus more on the parents’s needs than the children’s and on how men (mostly) can manipulate the system to make it look like the already-controlled wife is incapable of being parenting. This book needs to be read – I thought I knew all this but I didn’t appreciate just how deeply into our systems the problem goes.

As for books that had a strong impact on me, I’m going to name three. They didn’t necessarily change how I view the world, but they certainly enhanced my understanding of it and/or of myself. They are, in the order I read them:

• Mark McKenna’s Return to Uluru (my review) for its no-holds-barred investigation into some challenging and hidden stories of Australia’s past. Every new correction to Australia’s history, as we learnt it, has value.
• Carmel Bird’s Telltale (my review) for its intelligent and revealing insights into how her reading affected her, which in turn contributed to my thinking about my own reading and its impact on my intellectual, emotional and social development.
• Biff Ward’s The third chopstick (my review) for its portrayal of an activist who fearlessly confronted those most affected by that activism and/or the war they were protesting.

While all these books made an impact on me, I also need to say that, overall, the books that most impact me are, really, fiction. That is where the real punches mostly are!

For those of you doing Nonfiction November, I’ll see your Worldview Changers I’m sure, but, if you’re not, would you like to share any or some of yours?

Week 3 of Nonfiction November (November 14-18) focuses on “all the great nonfiction books that almost don’t seem real. A sports biography involving overcoming massive obstacles, a profile on a bizarre scam, a look into the natural wonders in our world—basically, if it makes your jaw drop, you can highlight it for this week’s topic” and is hosted by Christopher (Plucked from the Stacks).

Last year, introducing my post on this week, I wrote that what the idea of “stranger than fiction” brings to my mind are those coincidences (and the like) that happen in real life that a fiction writer could never get away with. This week’s topic host, Christopher, though, takes a broader view, including things like “overcoming massive obstacles”, “scams” and “natural wonders”. My interpretation is a bit different again.

I’m starting with an essay I read via the Library of America’s Story of the Week program, James Weldon Johnson’s “Stranger than fiction” (my review). Johnson wrote one of those trickily titled novels, The autobiography of an ex-colored man (1912). It was inspired by his own experiences, and has been described as the first fictional memoir by a black person. Its protagonist is a young unnamed biracial man, who, because of such experiences as witnessing a lynching, decides to “pass” as white for safety and advancement reasons. The novel chronicles his experiences and ambivalent feelings about his decision.

In 1915, Johnson wrote his essay “Stranger than fiction” about his novel’s reception. To summarise what I wrote in my post, he basically found that for many Northern reviewers, the work was so “real” they could barely believe it was fiction, whereas Southern critics asserted that the work was unbelievable because, Johnson wrote, they didn’t believe African Americans could “pass” as “the slightest tinge of African blood is discernible, if not in the complexion, then in some trait or characteristic betraying inferiority.” For Johnson, this was “laughable”, as most people, he said, know of people who are “passing.”

There are so many “stranger than fiction” layers to this essay and situation but I will leave it here. This essay would, of course, have been another great Week 2 pairing for me with Nella Larsen’s Passing.

What can be stranger than families?

Families, of course, are the stuff of fiction, particularly unhappy ones (as Tolstoy famously shared), but they can also be found in non-fiction, particularly in memoirs, so here I’m going to share three families which were/are strange for one reason or another:

• Alison Croggon’s Monsters: A reckoning (my review) chronicles a sister-relationship that went badly sour. It’s always sad – and yes, a bit strange to me – when families fall apart. The collapse of siblings relationships is particularly devastating I think.
• Jane Sinclair’s Shy love smiles and acid drops (my review) chronicles the author’s parents’ difficult relationship. There is much that is “strange” here for most of us, starting with the family’s bohemian lifestyle.
• Cindy Solonec’s Debesa: The story of Frank and Katie Rodriguez (my review) is strange in a different way. The relationship here is a positive and productive one, but the press release for the book makes its “strangeness” clear when it says the book is about “the unlikely partnership of Cindy’s parents: Frank Rodriguez, once a Benedictine novice monk from Spain, and Katie Fraser, who had been a novitiate in a very different sort of abbey – a convent for ‘black’ women at Beagle Bay Mission” (near Broome). Debesa is also a little strange in form as it is one of those hybrid biography-memoirs in which the writer is part of the family she’s focusing on.

None of these families are probably stranger than anything you’d find in fiction, but they do prove that the strange families you find in fiction can indeed be realistic!

For those of you doing Nonfiction November, I’ll see your strange offerings I’m sure, but, if you’re not, I’d love to see what strange nonfiction you’ve read.