Know Your Enemy

"I just don't buy the idea that people buy these books for information or advice, for an 'Open Sesame' to becoming free of their own harrowing memories. Rather they show that, as a nation, we seem utterly in thrall to paedophilia. We are obsessed with it. And now, with these books, we are wallowing in the muck of it. It's all rather disgusting."

Times columnist Carol Sarler commenting in this article on the BBC site on what The Bookseller has labelled "mis-lit".

So, are "misery memoirs" genuinely affecting for the reader and cathartic for the writer, or just voyeuristic and titillating trash? Inevitably the truth probably lies somewhere between the two extremes - but what is certain is that publishers have realised that there is a significant market for them, for whatever reason, and that it's one to be milked for all it's worth. Helping the author and subsequently readers to cope with childhood traumas is all fine and well, but it's cold hard cash that really matters. Misery has become a commodity; as the much-lamented Mclusky observed, it's important that My Pain And Sadness Is More Sad And Painful Than Yours.

Me, I'm much more inclined to pick up a copy of Andrew Collins' 'Where Did It All Go Right?', a good-natured corrective spoof of the mis-lit trend. Once I've ploughed through some more of the books that have been sat on my shelves for the past couple of years patiently waiting to be read, that is...