Memoir Essays

Sarah Polley's work as an actor, screenwriter and director is celebrated for its honesty, complexity and deep humanity. She brings all those qualities, along with her exquisite storytelling chops, to these six essays. Each one captures a piece of Polley's life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory, the mutability of reality in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person she is now but was not then. As Polley writes, the past and present are in a “reciprocal pressure dance”.

放送開始５０年を迎える「ウルトラセブン」のアンヌ隊員こと、ひし美ゆり子が、１１年続く自身のブログの中から、監督や出演者の思い出、懐かしい撮影現場の秘話など、お気に入りのエピソードを厳選した

In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know, Colm Tóibín turns his incisive gaze to three of Ireland's greatest writers, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats and James Joyce, and their earliest influences: their fathers.

In his essay about the life of Irish writer John McGahern, Tóibín reveals the tones of melancholy and amusement within both art and the artist. In his extraordinary essay on his cancer diagnosis, Tóibín unpicks the word 'battle', and illuminates the distress, horror and blankness of his experiences. From the shades of light and dark in a Venice without tourists, to the streets of Buenos Aires riddled with disappearances and tied up with dictators and politics, we find ourselves considering law and religion in Ireland as well as in Marilynne Robinson's fiction.

This essay comes from the NPR series This I Believe, which features brief personal reflections from both famous and unknown Americans. The pieces that make up the series compel listeners to rethink not only what and how they have arrived at their beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others.

“During one of the texting sessions that became our habit over the period I now think of as both late and early in our relationship, my mother revealed the existence of someone named Janis Jerome.” So begins Michelle Orange’s extraordinary inquiry into the meaning of maternal legacy - in her own family and across a century of seismic change. Jerome, she learns, is one of her mother’s many alter egos: the name used in a case study about her mother’s midlife choice to leave her husband and children to pursue career opportunities in a bigger city.

Sandra Brown revisits two pivotal Christmases from her own past in this heartfelt and intimate essay. One needn't be familiar with Brown's previous works to be deeply moved by this personal reflection on the meaning of family, faith, celebration, and generosity: but fans will find it a unique and special insight into the New York Times best-selling author's life and values.

In Bookends, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon offers a compilation of pieces about literature - age-old classics as well as his own - that presents a unique look into his literary origins and influences, the books that shaped his taste and formed his ideas about writing and reading.

大宅賞、講談社ノンフィクション賞、ダブル受賞に輝いた感動ノンフィクション!敗戦から12年目に遺族が手にした6通の遺書。ソ連軍に捕われ、極寒と飢餓と重労働のシベリア抑留中に死んだ男のその遺書は

大人が、自分自身に満足するための25篇

巨万の富や名誉を手に入れたあと、次に人が欲しくなるのは、この夕焼け空なのかもしれない。(本文より)


『悪人』『横道世之介』『さよなら渓谷』『怒り』などの ベストセラーで知られる芥川賞作家・吉田修一が、 日々を懸命に生きている大人たちに贈る、 どこまでも前向きで心に沁みる50篇のエッセイです。

大人たちを縛る「記憶」との上手な付き合い方がしみじみ伝わってくる 『泣きたくなるような青空』の25篇、自分自身がいかに唯一無二でユニークなのかをあらためて自覚できる『最後に手にしたいもの』の25篇の、2冊同時発売。

また、出版業界としては異例の
・紙書籍
・電子書籍
・audible(本を耳で楽しむオーディオブック)

の3媒体同時発売!
audibleは『泣きたくなるような青空』を高良健吾さん、『最後に手にしたいもの』を眞島秀和さんに朗読いただきます。

From her own girlhood in rural Oregon, Jen Percy has long contemplated the intergenerational trauma passed down through three generations of women, drawing from the survival lessons of her naturalist mother and her grandmother, who fled to a woman-led cult. But as a young woman, she is confounded by her own passive responses to male attention, setting off a broader inquiry into how fear shapes behavior.

Though celebrated playwright Wendy Wasserstein was firmly rooted in New York's cultural life, her appeal is universal. Shiksa Goddess collects her urbane, inspiring, and deeply empathetic essays, all written when she was in her forties, and all infused with her trademark irreverent humor. The full range of Wasserstein's mid-life obsessions are covered in this eclectic collection— everything from Chekhov, politics, and celebrity to family, fashion, and real estate.

The Right Side of History tells the 100-year history of queer activism in a series of revealing close-ups, first-person accounts, and intimate snapshots of LGBT pioneers and radicals. This diverse cast stretches from the Edwardian period to today, including first-person accounts of the key protest that is at the heart of the 2015 movie Stonewall. The book shows how LGBT folk have always been in the forefront of progressive social evolution in the United States.

Jerome K. Jerome is of course known for the hilarious adventures of “Three Men in a Boat”. He also wrote many short stories and essays that have all the wit, whimsy, and wisdom of his more famous work. The essays in this volume were published together with “The Diary of a Pilgrimage” in 1891. They are: “Evergreens”, “Clocks”, “Tea-Kettles”, “A Pathetic Story”, “The New Utopia”, and “Dreams”.

This is a collection of short stories and essays on a variety of subjects from the scientific and technical to the humorous and childhood memories, from sasquatch and bigfoot to personal relationships. It is a volume of easy listening, sometimes humorous and sometimes poignant, but always worthwhile.

When Trisha Low moves West, her journey is motivated by the need to arrive “somewhere better” - someplace utopian, like revolution; or safe, like home; or even clarifying, like identity. Instead, she faces the end of her relationships, a family whose values she has difficulty sharing, and America’s casual racism, sexism, and homophobia. In this book-length essay, the problem of how to account for one’s life comes to the fore - sliding unpredictably between memory, speculation, self-criticism, and art criticism, Low seeks answers that she knows she won’t find.

Un viaggio, per quanto terribile possa essere, nel ricordo si trasforma in qualcosa di meraviglioso. La vita è un viaggio, e come tutti i viaggi si compone di ricordi. In questo audiolibro, Banana Yoshimoto raccoglie preziosi frammenti di memoria e ci porta con sé, lontano nel tempo e nel mondo. Dalle emozioni del primo amore alla scoperta della maternità, dalle piramidi egiziane alla Tokyo degli anni settanta.

In letters addressed to their friends, to members of their family - both biological and chosen - and to fellow storytellers, Akwaeke describes the shape of a life lived in overlapping realities. Through heartbreak, chronic pain, intimacy with death, becoming a beast, this is embodiment as a nonhuman: outside the boundaries imposed by expectations and legibility. This book is an account of the gruelling work of realignment and remaking necessary to carve out a future for oneself. The result is a black spirit memoir: a powerful, raw unfolding of identity.

Acclaimed Cave Canem poet and essayist Remica Bingham-Risher interweaves personal essays and interviews she conducted over a decade with 10 distinguished Black poets, such as Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, and Patricia Smith, to explore the impact of identity, joy, love, and history on the artistic process. Each essay is thematically inspired, centered on one of her interviews, and uses quotes drawn from her talks to showcase their philosophies. Each essay also delves into how her own life and work are influenced by these elders.

自分のことが嫌いだったオンナ・青木さやかが、こじれた人生を一つ一つほどいていく。生きることの意味を追い求めるヒューマンストーリー。