Lech Blaine is an award-winning writer and car crash survivor. His new book Car Crash: The Memoir of The Aftermath looks in-depth at the event which changed his life and left three of his best friends dead. These are his picks for his books related to trauma recovery.
1. The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr
The Liars’ Club proved once and for all that memoir could measure up to great fiction. Karr divulges her survival of childhood sexual abuse but it is also an old-fashioned family saga, with some unforgettably colourful characters.
2. Don’t Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine
A masterpiece. Rankine depicts the way people vicariously consume public spectacles of trauma to distract themselves from their private traumas. Humans have never been more aware of what plagues us psychologically. And yet we have also become desensitised to the pain of others.
3. The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn
The loquacious antihero numbs a dark childhood trauma with alcohol, sex, heroin and painkillers. It sounds extremely grim. But St. Aubyn depicts upper-class neuroses with some of the funniest prose in literature.
4. Eggshell Skull by Bri Lee
Eggshell Skull is an unflinching account of Lee’s decision to pursue charges against her sexual abuser, and the way Australia’s legal system is stacked against the abused. It will resonate with readers whether they are familiar with Australia or not.
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5. The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder by David J. Morris
The Evil Hours weaves Morris’s personal experiences of PTSD – sustained during war – with the literary, scientific and cultural history of trauma. He provides moving insights from people who suffered different types of traumas to him.
