It's a book that could have been annoying, but for the most part it wasn't. She does mention running into Heath Ledger shortly before his death, in a wistful anecdote where she imagines that the coffee they had together was a magic coffee that prevented his subsequent overdose. Leah McLaren, when Forrest plays coy about the Colin Farrell thing in an interview, says ' It’s simply unreasonable to accept public adulation for laying yourself bare one moment, then behave as though your privacy is being invaded the next.' I sort of get that, but on the whole I think I prefer Forrest's decision not to use names - it's only just a bit less obvious and self-aggrandizing, but it is still less so. She also mentions dating 'a writer who is almost as famous for his tumultuous private life as he is for his award-winning work', and in interviews she states that she's dated several movie stars, but 'Colin is the only one I ever got caught with' (because it's so embarrassing dating movie stars that everyone tries to hide it, natch).

Maybe the problem is that the people reading are just sort of bitchy and impossible-to-please? Nah.Īlso, do you think it's worse if a person who has slept with a lot of famous people is a name-dropper or a name-withholder? The widely-held consensus is that Forrest's 'Gypsy Husband' is Colin Farrell - their relationship is well-publicized, and there are no pictures of her with other movie stars - but she doesn't name him in the book. If you're a really good writer, conversely, you always run the risk of writing too well about your crippling depression and multiple suicide attempts, in which case people reading the book (and by 'people' I still mean me) are automatically suspicious about how tormented you really are when you manage to describe bodily fluids, near-death experiences and incarceration in psychiatric wards with such wit and wisdom. There's sort of a Catch-22 situation, I think, about memoir writing, which is that, if you're a crappy writer, people reading the book (and by 'people' I mean 'me') are annoyed by your crappy writing but it does sometimes convey a sort of rough authenticity, because you haven't been able to beautify your pain with eloquence and metaphor. In a voice unlike any other, Emma Forrest explores depression and mania, but also the beauty of love-and the heartbreak of loss. A modern day fairy tale of New York, Your Voice in My Head is a dazzling and devastating memoir, clear-eyed and shot through with wit.

From Goodreads: Emma Forrest, an English journalist, was twenty-two and living in America when she realised that her quirks had gone beyond eccentricity.

Your voice in my head book