Buss, Helen M. Repossessing the World: Reading Memoirs by Contemporary Women.(Book Review)

Toronto: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2002. 232 pp. ISBN 0-88920-408-X, $39.95.

Helen M. Buss argues convincingly that memoir serves as an ideal form for women--in particular--to "repossess ways of knowing the world and the self that do not divide the heart from the head" (xxv). Much of her certainty derives from direct experience: Buss has written her own memoir, Memoirs from Away: A New Found Land Girlhood (1999), and a number of scholarly works on women's life writing. Every chapter focuses on a different facet of memoir, each developing the genre's versatility and potential. In her preface, Buss presents a brief but engaging memoir of her own, both to convey some sense of the form, and to explore the reasons she chose this genre.

In chapter one, Buss responds to the anticipated question, "What is the difference between autobiography and memoir?" promptly and complexly. Buss cites the various characteristics of memoir, but cautions that she does not intend to create a rigid definition for the genre. However, Buss does clarify the qualities memoirs share. Principally, memoirs are episodic in structure and carefully positioned within a particular history and culture. Memoirs use elements of the confession, by having at their core "the desire to reveal the hidden thing, the forbidden knowledge" (12), but unlike traditional confessions such as those of Rousseau or Augustine, women's memoirs emphasize relationships, and "often end not with resolution, but with a condition of continuing renegotiation" (13). Further, Buss contends, successful memoirs use a tripartite narrative voice that functions as participant, witness, and reflective/reflexive consciousness. In addition, memoirs must be researched--in the broadest sense of the term--so that the subject is historicized and placed in a larger …