Memoir Archives - Robert Breen 📚

H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

November 30, 2025 / Memoir, Reading, Travel and Nature

I came to this book with high expectations. The New York Times considers it one of the best books (so far) of the 21st Century.

The story is simple enough: a professor with a background in amateur falconry retreats from public life after the death of her father to train a goshawk. I enjoyed the descriptions of the hawk, the English countryside, and the fringe customs of falconry.

The book bogged down for me in two ways: the author’s overwrought descriptions of her descent into near madness over the loss of her 67-year-old father, and the inclusion of a quasi-biography of the writer T.H. White. I think this book would have been better without the deep dives into her fascination with White. And the emotional punch would have been more effective had she let her actions speak for her feelings of grief. We all approach grief in different ways, so I know this is an unfair judgment on my part. This one just missed the mark for me.

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Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li

November 29, 2025 / ★★★★★, Memoir, Reading

There are levels of hell on earth that only a parent who has lost a child have traveled. YiYun Li, a successful novelist and mother of two, lost her oldest son to suicide seven years ago. Her youngest son, James, whom this memoir is loosely about, took his life last year in the same fashion as his brother. In this memoir, Li pays tribute to James and shares what it’s like for a mother to lose her children to suicide.

Li is a gifted writer. The language here is sparse and omits any emotional flourish. She is clear-eyed and honest about her experience. As someone who has lost a child, I could only read this in small doses. I can’t imagine how difficult this was for her to write.

Sometimes people ask me where I am in the grieving process, and I wonder whether they understand anything at all about losing someone.

One of the incredible things about books is when an author writes something so beautiful and so recognizably true, but you could never have grasped the thought on your own. Most readers won’t understand, but a few, the ones who never chose to be part of this unfortunate club, will nod their heads, and cry, and set this book down in meditative thought many times during their reading.

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This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett

November 5, 2024 / Essays, Memoir, Reading

I enjoy Ann Patchett’s novels, but I love her essays. She writes with such clarity and compassion. My first book of her essays was These Precious Days, which was written upfront as a collection of essays. This one came together after the fact as a compilation of essays Ann had written in magazines over many years. Only later did she decide to publish them as a book. As a result, there isn’t much of an underlying theme, other than Ann herself. I came for the essays on writing, but stayed for her views on RV life, dogs, opera, marriage, friendship, and defying all odds, the opening an independent bookstore in the post Amazon era. Ann narrated the audiobook, which added to the personal voice of these essays. After reading this and These Precious Days, I will basically read anything she writes.

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Somehow by Anne Lamott

September 8, 2024 / Essays, Memoir, Reading

I loved Lamott’s Bird by Bird memoir on the writing craft. The writing here was good, but forced. Too many similes, too many quotes from others. Great life advice: be kind to yourself & others, all we need is love, etc., but it felt repetitive to me. Her advice on sobriety and community is heartfelt and immensely quotable.

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Here is New York by E. B. White

August 20, 2024 / ★★★★★, Memoir, Reading

A beautiful, poignant essay of White’s return to New York after a long absence. He celebrates the eternal qualities of New York and the people it attracts, while mourning the loss of his New York, which can never be restored for New York is always changing. That’s what makes it special.

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Will by Will Smith

February 18, 2022 / ★★★★★, Memoir, Reading

Fascinating memoir. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Will Smith himself, which was a performance in itself. Some very good life lessons about pushing through adversity to achieve big goals. Some very funny parts, and some sad ones too. I loved it.

Favorite Quotes

“Stop thinking about the damn wall!” he said. “There is no wall. There are only bricks. Your job is to lay this brick perfectly. Then move on to the next brick. Then lay that brick perfectly. Then the next one. Don’t be worrying about no wall. Your only concern is one brick.”

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