Books like The Disintegration of a Heritage

I loved Daisy Darker because it was haunting and impossible to put down.

The eerie, locked-in setting gave me chills, and every page pulled me deeper in. I kept thinking I had the mystery solved, but the ending shocked me completely. I closed the book in awe and couldn’t stop thinking about it. 

I was curious to find how Bronnie Wave became an accidental end of life carer. I found it interesting to read this was often shaped by the outlook of those she was caring for rather than any pre-fixed ideas on her part.

I congratulate Bronnie on a career she has taken to brilliantly which also brings to the reader her unique insight.

I have been fortunate to know Matthew Hutton for decades. In his professional career, he qualified as a solicitor specializing in private client tax and became an excellent tax lecturer in this field. In retirement, he became an ordained minister in the Church of England, and during this time he has also found time to write the one book that complements my own book.

I have found it so useful in writing my own guide for my family to help them deal with my assets after I have died. I liked the pithy quotes interspersing the practical steps I should take in documenting my own position. I have sent copies of this book to some of my clients. The actor Stephen Fry said, in reviewing this book “Bravo! This is just about as useful as a book can be."

Diagnosed with incurable cancer, this book was written by Simon Boas both as a testament to having a good death, a term I use in my book, but to also live well with the knowledge that the end of your natural life will be coming soon.

Simon was well-traveled and involved with the delivery of overseas humanitarian aid. He brings wisdom, humor, and compassion to show, without self-pity, that we can all enjoy life even in the knowledge that we will soon pass away. Simon’s book was published shortly after he died.

Miriam Darlington is my favourite author and Otter Country is one of the most thumbed, tatty-cornered, precious books that I own. I love it: for its voice, its humour and its beautiful prose. Darlington takes you on a gentle meander through the world of the otter in the most relatable of writing styles. She doesn’t start out as an otter expert; she learns as she goes, and so do you. Everything about this book is wonderful, and I would say the same about her other book, Owl Sense, which I have only left off this list because I wanted to cover five different authors!

After reading this one, I wanted to go back to the “Old Country,” and nobody writes about the Old Country quite like Singer. I really enjoyed his stories about ordinary people in extraordinary situations—or maybe they were ordinary situations to them.

I was drawn to his portrayal of a world that no longer exists but was vibrant, joyous, and tragic at the time. His characters spoke to me directly and inspired me to write short stories of my own. I once met Singer and was able to share one of my own short stories with him. He eventually put it in his archive, which was an honor for me.

Native Country of the Heart is, like my memoir, a mother-daughter story. Queer Chicana feminist Cherríe Moraga intertwines her own story with her mother Elvira from childhood onward. Her resilient mother had a rough life, starting with being hired out as a child by her dad to pick cotton in the California fields. I learned so much about Chicano culture and the Mexican diaspora that we never get in school. One stunning fact: when Dust Bowl survivors came to California, two million Mexicans were repatriated to Mexico to let the white immigrants work the same fields. Moraga beautifully layers her personal story with cultural insights and reflection. I was very moved by Moraga’s grief during the slow loss of Elvira to dementia and her death from Alzheimer's.

No one can say exactly when Rock ’n’ Roll was born, including biographer, novelist, poet, and recently deceased journalist Nick Tosches, but he provides enough background musings to take us on a wild ride through American musical history.

His book reveals twisted roots indeed, some that provided me with reference material regarding a connection between minstrelsy and one of the most popular Christmas tunes of all time. And a country song breaks loose from the genre corral and into the world of pop music when it is made into one of the best-known ballads ever by a singing politician.

Musicologist Lydia Hamessley delved into Dolly’s songwriting corpus over the course of a decade, analyzing her tremendous output of songs, according to different categories.

“Coat of Many Colors,” for example, is the most beloved from among Dolly’s autobiographical songs. Lydia breaks down the harmony, and relationships between melody and lyrics to explain why the song works so well.

Songs about women’s lives, in another section, includes deeply affecting vignettes like “Down from Dover,” about a pregnant young woman’s despair after being abandoned by her lover and rejected by family.

Lydia’s book systematically unpacks the musical heart of Dolly’s creative genius, a quality that can at times be overshadowed in writings about her by the outsized nature of Dolly’s public persona.

Edna O’Brien’s 2012 autobiography Country Girl is a blunt, gripping, lyrical and non-self-pitying depiction of her early life in the west of Ireland. It exposes the stultifying conformity imposed by the Catholic Church, family and community which I experienced myself. She rebelled as she sought freedom and self-expression from a domineering mother and drunken father. Edna’s escape to Dublin, London and New York as well as her exile from Ireland reflects an individual addicted to drugs and alcohol who seeks acknowledgement, liberty and success through many failed relationships. Edna’s autobiography resonates with many of my own experiences of the 1960’s. Country Girl demonstrates how one Irish female writer broke the cultural silence so that others would not feel alone. Her writing was an inspiration to me for my own memoir.