Forget fiction, the most interesting, frustrating, and heartbreaking stories come from real-life. Whether it’s a gut-punching loss, a life-affirming experience, a phenomenal achievement, or just the minutiae of everyday life in a mad family, we all have rich and unique backstories.
But, admittedly, some tales make for more captivating reading than others – hence why, much to our collective dismay, we haven’t all got bestselling autobiographies. And yet, even if you’ve got the bones of a beguiling story, it takes a certain magic to turn it into a memoir that people actually want to read.
With that in mind, we’ve rounded up those who’ve mastered the art of the autobiography, each of whom, in their own unique way, traverses the tragedy, joy, mundanity, and tenderness of lives well- (or not-so-well-) lived.
Here’s our pick of 10 of the wildest, frankest, and most fascinating autobiographies.
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
Anyone who’s ever experienced a devastating and world-shaking loss – and even those who haven’t – will feel a visceral response to Michelle Zauner’s phenomenal memoir, Crying in H Mart. In it, Zauner, the lead vocalist of wondrous pop band Japanese Breakfast, grapples with her connection to her Korean identity as she navigates her mother’s terminal illness and untimely death. It’s a candid, heart-wrenching exploration of how food connects us to our heritage and our loved ones, even when they’ve passed, and of the turbulent, tender, sometimes-suffocating, but always treasured relationship between mother and daughter.
Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama
Published over a decade before he became President of the United States, Barack Obama’s extraordinarily candid memoir, Dreams From My Father, sees the political figure retrace his parents’ lives – from Kansas to Indonesia – and confront his father’s absence and tragic, premature death. The enthralling tale follows Obama through childhood, college, and eventually to his father’s home country of Kenya, where he begins to face up to his own understanding of his identity and sense of belonging as a mixed-race person in America.
This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay
In This is Going to Hurt, a diaristic telling of life as an NHS doctor, comedy writer and former junior doctor Adam Kay shares frank, funny, and horrifying tales of the realities of working on a hospital ward. Detailing sleepless nights, patient anecdotes – some stupid, some heartwarming – and shocking tales of the mistreatment and neglect that doctors have to endure, This is Going to Hurt is an essential read and moving homage to the heroes of our health service. In fact, it’s so good, it’s even got its own BAFTA-winning TV adaptation.
Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel
When Elizabeth Wurtzel published her phenomenal, hugely influential memoir Prozac Nation, she was just 27 years old – but she was no stranger to the weight of the world by then. The book traces the writer’s experience with depression, from early childhood through to adulthood, and her eventual treatment with the antidepressant Prozac. Sharing agonising detail of the suffocating effects of perpetual sadness, Wurtzel’s raw, dazzling memoir is credited with opening up the dialogue about mental health. It’s also just beautifully written, with haunting, gut-punching lines like, “If you are chronically down, it is a lifelong fight to keep from sinking”.
Take Away: Stories From a Childhood Behind the Counter by Angela Hui
Angela Hui’s warm and poignant memoir, Take Away: Stories From a Childhood Behind the Counter, tells the story of the journalist’s upbringing in a Chinese takeaway in rural Wales. Traversing hilarious, happy memories, like helping her parents prep food after school and the comfort of being surrounded by her home culture, as well as the terror and turmoil of financial insecurity and racist attacks, Take Away is a beautiful ode to Hui’s childhood and culinary heritage, as well as a stark and vital exploration of the experience of being othered in contemporary Britain.
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
In her devastating memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, the inimitable Joan Didion attempts to make sense of the sudden death of her husband and the hospitalisation of their daughter, who also tragically died just months before the book’s publication. One of the most influential and profound books about grief, The Year of Magical Thinking sees Didion examine and re-examine the days, weeks, and months before and after her husband’s passing, and painstakingly ruminate on the intricacies of his death. Haunted by his absence, Didion tells of the futile gesture of leaving his shoes out for when he returns; her own form of magical thinking.
Pour Me by A.A. Gill
In his frank memoir, Pour Me, journalist A.A. Gill reflects on his past struggles with alcoholism, meditating on what and who he lost during times of bleary-eyed inebriation, and how he clawed his way out to sobriety via writing. Bursting with humour, self-reflection, and passionate examination of his past and present, Pour Me is a candid, unflinching exploration of Gill’s fascinating and turbulent life.
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
Jennette McCurdy’s provocatively-titled memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, is heartbreaking, darkly funny, and tenaciously truthful in equal measure. In it, the former iCarly and Sam & Cat protagonist recalls her experience of growing up as a child star with an overbearing mother. Determined to fulfil her mum’s acting dream, McCurdy adhered to her authoritarian demands when it came to restricted eating, laborious makeovers, and equal share of her income. But, when her mother dies, and she begins to reflect on the resulting struggles of such a pressurised childhood – including anxiety, addiction, and a penchant for toxic relationships – rather than feel heavy with grief, McCurdy feels like a weight has been lifted for the first time. In I’m Glad My Mom Died, she details it all with astonishing and commendable honesty and wit.
Gotta Get Theroux This: My Life and Strange Times in Television by Louis Theroux
Nobody does an interview quite like Louis Theroux. The charming journalist has won the hearts of the nation – and the world – with his wild, weird, and insightful documentaries, which see him take viewers everywhere from prisons and extremist rallies to psychiatric hospitals and into the homes of your favourite (and least favourite) celebs. Along the way, he’s tried his hand at everything from wrestling and rapping to gambling and swinging, and in his memoir, Gotta Get Theroux This: My Life and Strange Times in Television, he invites the reader behind-the-scenes of it all. With his trademark wit and wry observations, Theroux tells the story of how he got here, and shares the secrets of his unforgettable, idiosyncratic career.
Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
Patricia Lockwood decided to write her memoir, Priestdaddy – a comedic, eternally silly trip into the poet’s family life – when, “penniless and exhausted”, she and her husband were forced to move back in with her parents. Tracing her upbringing with her eccentric, charismatic, Catholic priest father and riddle-speaking mother, Lockwood grapples with the joy and darkness of her childhood, and details how she formed an individualised worldview, separate from the imposed traditionalism of her formative years. It’s a vivid, hilarious, and truly mad journey through the life of a magically talented writer.