My Lie: A True Story of False Memory

By Meredith Maran

Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, Health, Fitness & Dieting

In the late 1980s the journalist Meredith Maran, immersed in reporting on child abuse and in therapy culture, came to believe that her father had sexually abused her. She accused him in 1988 and kept her children away from him for years. Her memoir recounts how she became convinced, how the recovered-memory movement spread through therapists and courts, and how, as those claims collapsed, she came to see that her memories were false and sought to reconcile with her father.

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• Ryan Holiday: “This is a very sensitive book on a very sensitive topic: that most recovered memories are not true. But the author approaches it with an empathy and self-awareness that I did not anticipate. I've said before that one of the things I respect most is when a person turns over a long-held belief.”