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Literary memoir looks back on a fiercely intellectual, high-control childhood and the hard-won process of claiming a life of her own

HEALDSBURG, Calif. — In her memoir The Size of Dreaming, author Julia Mattingly looks back on her extraordinary childhood, exploring what it means to grow up in a college community as the only child of brilliant but controlling parents where, amid towering expectations and little tolerance for deviation, she fought to claim an identity of her own.

Mattingly’s...

I’ve been reading Helen Garner’s diaries before going to sleep. It’s fun to dip into the entries of this famous Australian writer. Like Janet Malcolm she is known for writing about a criminal trial in This House of Grief, which I am also reading right now.

I recently read the novel John of John by Douglas Stuart. He is the author of Shuggie Bain, which won the Booker prize and which I also loved. If you are interested in life on the islands of Scotland, or just like extraordinary writing, you might want to try this book. I happen to have friends from the MacLeod clan...that is what first drew me to the book, when I read a review. But there are many other features to recommend the book.