One for the Books: Six memoirs, windows into the lives of others

Recently I’ve been fascinated by memoirs. (You’ll see why at the end of this column!) These all happen to be written by women; I thought I would relate to them more than to those written by men. I’m not sure I did, but I learned something from each of them.

Among these books, the one that probably made the most impact is “Corrections in Ink” by Keri Blakinger. The author grew up in an all-American, upper-middle-class family with caring, supportive parents. She was a bright student and a talented figure skater with a promising future, but she couldn’t handle the stress. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a dark side. I tried to kill myself for the first time in my mid-teens. … Before that, I dabbled with cutting, but instead settled on starving myself,” she writes.