6 Reasons Why We Love to Read (& Write) a Faux Memoir

Fake, faux, or plain fiction—is the label so important when the words you write are not strictly true? Quite a bit, or so I’ve learned recently, in creating my own faux memoir; The Scandalous Life of Ruby Devereaux follows one aged writer, from ages 17 to 90, across the globe—London, Venice, New York, Cold War Eastern Europe, and Vietnam—and through a myriad of peril, tragedy, and joy. Cradle to grave stuff.

(POV: Choosing Between First-Person and Third-Person.)

I hear a host of writers cry out in the distance: ‘But isn’t that just a first-person novel?’

Yes….and no. Arguably, there are millions of first-person voices in novel form. For me, what marks out a faux memoir is the level of investment in a single life, as with the novel that inspired Ruby. Having devoured William Boyd’s Sweet Caress, I was instantly moved to Google the focus of his book, Amory Clay, only to find she didn’t exist, except on the page and in Boyd’s head. Did I feel duped? No, because the author never claimed his Amory was real, and it was I who became entranced by his clever crafting. Suckered. 

The difference between faux and fakery is in the intent: The Hitler diaries were fake, so too the now infamous The Education of the Little Tree, where author Forrest Carter professed to have Cherokee origins, but was finally outed as a hoaxer. Even so, the book placed in the New York Times bestseller list in the 90s, more than a decade after its release.

The question is: Why do we want to believe so much, and to bury our noses in the good, the bad, and the ugly of lives gone by?

Nostalgia is ‘in’—

Whether it be the 1960s, 70s, or 80s, retro is popular, and for those of us who lived through some of those decades—in my case, growing up in the 1970s—it’s even easier to pillage our own memories for the food (pretty awful), the toys (plastic tat), and the TV (limited and often dull). Still, we hanker for that golden age when everything seemed better. 

There’s one chapter in Ruby focused on the long, hot British summer of 1976; I was 11 and recall the school break of halcyon days, riding bikes and eating ice-cream, but somehow blocked out the continual perspiration—nay, sweat—of living in a country without air-con. Only Ruby served to bring back the brute, clammy reality.

We can place ourselves in the narrative. 

Even if we weren’t actually present when Neil Armstrong’s boot hit the moon’s surface, or pinpoint the moment JFK died, we might remember where we were and the emotions it stirred. If it means you were bouncing on your parent’s knee at the time, or a mere twinkle in their eye, then doubtless they will happily recount their experiences, in minute detail, with the result that it seems so much more real. 

A reader feels connected in some way to what’s happening on the page. From a writer’s point of view, your reader is invested.

People’s lives are interesting. 

That is, other people’s daily events, which is why we spend so many hours watching reality TV and scrolling our phones, scratching for every detail of celebrity or influencer routines. If you can place your faux character alongside a bone-fide luminary, so much the better; Ruby sidles up to John Lennon in one chapter, and gets a hand-penned note from one Mr. McCartney in another—I’m certainly not immune to that type of celebrity stalking in my books. 

The very essence of fame is intoxicating (even though it’s become diluted with social media and the making of celebrities for being… just celebrities). But still, we want to be near them, with them, a pal, or a passing acquaintance. Something, anything. Don’t ask me about the psychology of that, because it’s an entirely different book, a PhD, and a lifetime of study. I’m just the scribe here.

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We’re curious. 

As a race, humans are downright nosy, and I for one view that as a good trait, if kept to a reasonable (and legal) level. And it’s nothing new—through the centuries, novelists have been writing about daily minutiae. A chap called Dickens did it very well, and a woman by the name of Austen peeled back the raw cattle market of marriage in the English Regency period. In modern times, you only have to look at the stratospheric sales of celeb biographies to see our interest is not waning: Prince Harry, Britney Spears, and, latterly, Barbara Streisand, who produced a physical brick of a book that no novelist would get away with these days. 

Ergo: we want to know. Everything. And so, if you don’t happen to be a celebrity, or live next door to a world-renowned rock star, you do the next best thing—you make it up, and have your character become the bosom buddy of said megastar.

We crave escapism. 

See above, for all those hours on social media. The western world can be so fast, so relentless and pressured, that books mercifully offer the escapism they always did, pre-TV, pre-Internet and—can you believe it?—in the days before cell phones. 

In my own mind, it’s as if we want to slip into a parallel universe at the end of a long day. Some do it with virtual reality games, but readers (luckily for us writers!) opt for a gentle flick of the page, dipping out of their own existence and into someone else’s. And it’s easy, since you need only time, a place to sit, and relative quiet. A decent flat white comes as optional, though desirable.

It’s fun. 

Speaking as a writer, there’s inordinate joy to be had in tinkering with a subject, sending them to places you know and love, and some you don’t but want to visit (very little excuse needed for a ‘research’ trip). If you’re a ‘pantser’ like me, you won’t have forensically researched your character, but discover the nitty-gritty along the way. 

There’s no doubt that Ruby and I grew together—she surprised and often shocked me; there were points, truly, where I felt demoted to being the typist. I would drop her in my chosen location, leaving her personality to navigate the nooks and crannies. Easy? No, but then writing rarely is. She had a tendency to go off track and I had to rein her in with a sharp tug one or twice.

Check out M. J. Robotham’s The Scandalous Life of Ruby Devereaux here:

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For this writer and reader, faux can be fun. Having typed my way through 90,000 words of a life, I maintain a memoir differs from first-person narrative in the careful weaving of a fiction into real, documented history—those big events and personalities we see on our front pages and TV screens. Even now, I look at those scenes in Forrest Gump where he receives a medal in the White House and question if it’s true footage. Similarly, Ruby proudly rubs shoulders with several Beatles, gets embroiled in a national spy scandal (plus a few others), and writes her own history in Vietnam, firmly knitted into the fabric of another’s orbit.

For me, that close weave into real life is vital, and it should count as clever rather than conniving, creative rather than a crafty deceit.

And scandalous? Oh, I do hope so.