Meet the folks
Brilliantly candid memoir from the youngest of the Wainwright-McGarrigles.
By James McNair.
It’s a family affair: Martha Wainwright, serial truth-teller.
Andrew Testa/Shutterstock
Stories I Might Regret Telling You: A Memoir
★★★★
Mar tha Wainwright
SIMON & SCHUSTER. £20
AS SEASONED WAINWRIGHT & McGarrigle watchers will know, the clan’s airing of its dirty laundr y via song has long been a thing. Martha Wainwright’s candid memoir ups the ante from its title down, however. Her lean, vivid prose and tendency to be hardest on herself bring you onside, but discomfiting events are rife. A year into chemo for sarcoma cancer, Wainwright’s mother Kate McGarrigle flies to London to see Martha sing Kurt Weill. Domiciled chez Martha, she is repeatedly awoken by her daughter and pals dancing to Laurie Anderson’s O Superman in their under wear while high on MDMA. “Kate [eventually] appeared with an expression that said, ‘Don’t fuck with me, I’m dying’” writes Wainwright, opining her mother was more worried than angry. “She knew she’d be leaving me for good soon, and here I was, still a mess.”