Critiques of Memoirs/Fiction/Nonfiction Titles: Learn from Them

Falling Into Manholes: The Memoir of a Bad/Good Girl by Wendy Merrill
"Merrill's debut collection of essays - which details her many troubled relationships, struggles with bulimia and alcoholism and sexual adventures - tries too hard to entertain the reader and ends up disappointing instead...

"Despite her intuition that most of the men she engages with are nothing but trouble, Merrill continues to date ones who take her money, cheat on her, string her long and stand her up. Merrill's best essays are not about dating." (Review from Publishers Weekly)

Freeing Yourself from the Narcissist in Your Life by Linda Martinez
"This book's title makes a promise it doesn't keep." (Review from Publishers Weekly)

Get Well Soon by Julie Halpern
"Based on Halperon's experiences, this first novel... evolves into an upbeat story that offers a hype-free, realistic look inside a teen (psychiatric) ward...

"As the novel progresses, readers will get a kick out of Anna's snarky sense of humor and her capacity for self-renewal" (Review from Publishers Weekly)

Have You Found Her? by Janice Erlbaum
"Erlbaum's memoir begins promisingly, her savior fantasies and insecurities rendered with honest and self-effacing good humor.

"However, her conclusions fall flat, missing opportunities to ponder larger issues at work in the story and opting instead for a mere cautionary tale." (Review from Publishers Weekly)

Memory by Phillippe Grimbert
"The story is powerful and gripping, but the juxtaposition between young Phillippe's fantasy life and adult wartime realities is underdeveloped. Readers will share in the catharsis of Grimbert's revelations, but may feel a lingering emptiness once his family's secrets have been fully purged." (Review from Publishers Weekly)

My Swordhand is Singing by Marcus Sedgewick
"The father/son dynamic is particularly well-wrought, with Tomas as a violent drunk who is nonetheless a decent man." (Review from Publishers Weekly)

One Soldier's War by Arkady Babchenko
"Written shortly after his discharge from the Army, the book burns with th eneed to tell of his personal ordeal... Here there are no good guys or moral high purpose; one fights only for the fellow soldier next to him...

"Babchenko, now a journalist, demonstrates genuine literary ability, especially in earlier vignette-like chapters, but readers will glean little about the conflict's political and historical context. Redundancy weakens a narrative that otherwise would have benefited from brevity." (Review from Publishers Weekly)

The Sky Isn't Visible From Here by Felicia C. Sullivan
"A poignant memoir (that) palpates the wounds of growing up with an unstable, cocaine-abusing mother... Sullivan's memoir cuts predictably back and forth in time and features some memorable types, such as needy girlfriends whose mothers were as wacky as her own... Putting herself through (school) hardly eased Sullivan's pain, but the act of writing purges her memory" (Review from Publishers Weekly)

What I Was by Meg Rosoff
"Rosoff's unconventional coming-of-age tale is elegantly crafted, though some readers might be turned off by the narrator's unrelenting cynicism... Nonetheless, Rosoff elegantly protrays how we often become who we need to be." (Review from Publishers Weekly)

Baiting the Hook: Effective Blurbs That Sell the Book

For Keeps: Women Tell the Truth About Their Bodies, Growing Older and Acceptance (Edited by Victoria Zackheim)
"Two very different threads run throughout the essays. One is the degree to which each writer has found a way to retain or regain a sense of power over her life. The other is the power of childhood messages and experiences for decades." (Quote from Publishers Weekly)

Her Last Death: A Memoir by Susanna Sonnenberg
"Sonnenberg's curse is her beautiful self-centered and crazy mother, who lies continually, does drugs and navigates through the world with sex as her sole point of reference. Her father is cold and distant. Add in abundant family money and you have the story of a young girl who grows up in a world of privilege, abuse and despicable behavior all around." (Quote from Publishers Weekly)

Memoirs of A Beautiful Boy by Robert Leleux
"Readers of the memoir have seen it all over the past few years: alcoholism, sexual abuse, eating disorders, narcissistic parents. Into this crowded exercise of mass therapy comes Robert Leleux's account of the years following his parents' marriage... Hysterical, horrifying and completely quotable... This is a spectacular debut; fans of David Sedaris, Augustin Bouroughs and Josh Kilmer-Purcell will love it" (Galley Talk, Michael Barnard of Rakestraw Books)

My Life as a Traitor by Zarah Ghahramani
"Scenes from a happy family life (crippled by the Iran-Iraq war) and a spirited adolescence (cut short by a repressive regime) alternate with prison experiences in this multi-layered account... Her painfully acquired knowledge of 'how easy it it is to reduce a human being to the level of an animal' does not keep her from 'wondering if I'll ever be pretty again.' Her straightforward style, elegant in its simplicity, has resonance and appeal..." (Quote from Publishers Weekly)

Someday My Prince Will Come: True Adventures of a Wanna-Be Princess by Jerramy Fine
"With a story line akin to a chick lit novel, her memoir follows her single-minded path to become suitable wife material for a prince... Amid her lessons in British society and the universal woes of dating, she also gains the knowledge that the strength of one's conviction can also be the strongest predictor of one's fate." (Quote from Publishers Weekly)

Query letter do's and don'ts

I liked this no-nonsense approach to how to write a query letter.

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Some of those questions were answered here.

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