I love reading non-fiction and lately I have been reading a lot of memoirs and autobiographical books (Patti Smith’s “Just Kids”, Dave Eggers “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”, Julie Doucet’s “My New York Diary”, etc.) and it is clear to me that part of their success stems from them one or two very well defined underlying concepts or themes. Now, I am currently reading Nadja Siegelman’s “I’m supposed to protect you from all this” and, yesterday I started writing this brief text about how much I was really enjoying how there seemed to be no clear or well defined underlying motif or topic. I think it makes it feel more life-like, more chaotic and therefore, more human. On its surface, one might think that its underlying topic is the mother-daughter relation, as it manifests in the relationships between Nadja and her mother, Françoise, and the relationship between Françoise herself and her mother, Josée. It is very tempting also to think of it as the female response to Art...
