Time for a new book genre - Firality

When she wrote her book Sex, Scars and a Superheroine with Scoliosis, Kremena didn't even pretend the story was 100% true. She dubbed her style 'Firality' - the fusion of fiction and reality. That was okay by me – Smink Works Books published her story because it was a rollicking good tale, not because it was ‘true’, even though it is drawn from the author’s life … and the author has had a very interesting life.

With the popularity of the memoir in the past few years has come a flood of exposés about authors who have 'made up' their book or parts of their book. While I think it's wrong for a writer to portray herself as an Iraqi Muslim wife when she’s never lived in Iraq, I am getting tired of the latest tabloid news story about an author who has duped us into believing their tale when it is in fact ‘a lie’. The thing is, a writer who has penned a memoir has no opportunity to say that parts of it are embellished, or completely fictional, or they are not sure they remembered the events correctly, because it's being marketed as a 'memoir', which promises 100% truth. Yet as soon as it's dubbed 'fiction', it loses its marketing power as a true story.

Personally, I loved reading A Million Little Pieces and it didn’t matter one jot to me when James Frey got stamped upon for fabricating parts of his book by Oprah, who had previously selected his book as part of her Oprah book club, and others. Frey himself says he shopped his manuscript as fiction to publishers without success. It was only when he labelled it memoir that a publisher agreed to take it on.

If we look at this on a basic level, memory is a very individual, very subjective thing, and is often fallible, and therefore there is going to be a little bit of ‘fiction’ in any memoir. So the question is whether it really matters that there is fiction in memoirs. I read books for entertainment, to prompt contemplation about life and philosophy, or for self improvement, and I love a good story. If I can get any or all of these things out of a book - even if it is a professed memoir with 'fabrications' - then I am satisfied.

Perhaps the question then should be whether there is truth in the work. I am a firm believer that each of those books condemned for being fabricated has some element of truth within - whether that is something as simple as some new observation on life, or an insight into another world or reality.

It seems to me that there is a need for this new genre in the world of publishing ... if only so authors can finally publish their part-memoir part-fiction books without the fear of backlash.

Suzanne Male is the publisher at Smink Works Books. She is contributing to The Writers' Resource Centre's book The Writer's Therapist, due out this September.

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