Still Crazy After All Those Years of Therapy

Sometimes people are just screwed up, and no amount of therapy, yoga, or hocus-pocus rituals is going to save them. That's what I came away with after reading Kathryn Harrison's (very short) memoir "The Mother Knot." The book chronicles Harrison's coming to terms with her rocky relationship with her dead mother. (This includes exhuming her mother's body, having it cremated, and then throwing ashes all around.) I am a fan of Kathryn Harrison, the novelist, but Kathryn Harrison, the memoirist? Not so sure. Harrison, who was abandoned by her mother, had an affair with her father, and has suffered from bulimia and anorexia, has documented all those traumas in both fiction and nonfiction accounts. My advice: tap into your personal hells only for your novels. Your fiction is much more readable and has more depth than your truth. (Image via Random House)