Coming Undone: A Memoir

 

Coming Undone: A Memoir by Terri White (2020 Canongate Books Ltd Kindle eBook 256p)

 

Terri White is the current editor-in-chief of the UK movie/entertainment magazine ‘Empire’. She has worked in senior positions at a number of magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. She also is an occasional host on Empire’s own podcast and a regular host on the related ‘Pilot TV’ podcast. The podcasts are where I first heard of her – she’s a cheeky, chirpy personality with a fierce intelligence and deep knowledge of her subjects. I was intrigued to find out more about her.

As the book starts, we find her in a New York hospital ward following a pill overdose. To her dismay she is being moved to a psychiatric ward, she hopes for only 3 days.

The book then moves back to her childhood days where she matter-of-factly recounts all the physical and sexual abuse she received at the hands of a seemingly endless string of horrible men who were attracted to her mother.

From there we go through her school days where she felt like the eternal outsider, the deprivations of being poor and her discovery of alcohol at age 12. We skip her later education (it seems she did well enough to attend and graduate from university) and catch up with her early in her career as things begin to fall (further) apart. She drinks herself to oblivion and finds some sort of solace in self-harm. The descriptions of what she wants to do to herself and what she actually does are extremely disturbing. I found it increasingly difficult to read, especially with the overwrought, florid language she uses to describe her thoughts.

About 75% of this book is a tirade of the bad things that happen to her. It is relentlessly GRIM. I know it sounds odd but it reminds me of the feeling I had reading descriptions of Nazi atrocities in other books. Its full-on stuff and doesn’t really let up until we catch up with her where we started in the psychiatric ward. There are a few lighter chapters as she adjusts to life in the ward and describes the people she meets and the activities she’s expected to do in there. She’s eventually released and falls back into her bad habits. There’s no real glimmer of hope until the end where she returns to the UK to take up what I assume is the job at Empire magazine.

Not fun and not for the faint-hearted. I’m not sure I can recommend this book without some warning.