This Much Is True

I have a problem with most books written by celebs. They can’t write. 

Yes, they can put a sentence together. Yes, they frequently have good stories – sad, funny, shocking, intriguing – to tell. But the actual construction of sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into chapters to produce a single, cohesive whole, isn’t a talent they possess.

Miriam Margolyes has got the stories. Lorry-loads of them. And they fit all of the four adjectives I’ve just used above. She’s also got a fascinating, larger than life character. But there’s no – or barely any - rhythm or flow to the book. Incident follows incident in a This happened, then That happened and after That happened, This happened pattern.

Each individual story is interesting, but they’re almost all recounted in series of flat, declarative statements, so that reading TMIT feels like wading through a series of collected Facebook comments. It’s exhausting.

Interesting? Absolutely. But exhausting.

The only ‘autobiography/memoir’ I can think of as I write that doesn’t fit this description is Sandi Toksvig’s Between the Stops. Built around a regular bus journey from her home in Dulwich to the BBC’s Broadcasting House in the heart of London, she springs from recounting incidents in her own life, to observations about fellow passengers, to local history prompted by passing landmarks.

Reading it feels like taking the bus journey with her to hear her life story, but being constantly interrupted by something interesting seen out of the window. And then getting back to the life story... before being interrupted by yet another fascinating landmark. Endlessly entertaining and quite beautifully written.