I wrote the book because that’s what you’re supposed to do when the story refuses to conclude.
A memoir.
A tell-all.
An autobiography that promised exposure, intimacy, reckoning.
None of which it delivered. So they say.
But the book was carefully vague. Meticulously evasive. It named no names, described no acts, and offered no confessions beyond weather, furniture, and the occasional emotional posture. People kept waiting for the revelation, the wound, the scandal.
Apparently, it never came.
THE FAILURE OF STYLE
I had attempted, earnestly and disastrously, to write it in the style of Joan Didion.
Short sentences.
Cool distance.
Meaning suspended between clauses like dry laundry in desert air.
But I misunderstood the assignment.
Didion writes clarity that feels spare.
I wrote spareness that felt evasive.
Where she excavates, I decorate.
Where she observes, I withheld.
I described rooms instead of arguments.
Sunlight instead of motive.
California as an atmosphere rather than a confession.
Readers said things like:
“Elegant but frustrating.”
“Beautifully written, but… what happened?”
“I feel like she knows something and won’t tell us.”
Correct.
THE TELL-ALL THAT TOLD NOTHING
The marketing copy promised revelations.
The chapters delivered restraint.
There were lovers, yes — but unnamed, unpinned, gendered only when unavoidable. There were betrayals — abstract, almost tasteful. There was Malibu — always Malibu — but as landscape, not evidence.
I never said who hurt whom.
I never said why anything ended.
I never said what the circles meant, or whether they existed at all.
It was, technically, a lie.
But not an inaccurate one.
THE INTERVIEWS
After publication, I did interviews. I still do.
Many interviews.
Podcasts with neutral lighting and heavy filters.
Literary panels with uncomfortable chairs and folded arms.
Zoom conversations where everyone nodded thoughtfully at nothing.
They asked the questions they always ask women who refuse to bleed on the page:
“Is this book true?”
“Who is it about?”
“Was writing it cathartic?”
“Do you feel healed now?”
I answered carefully.
“I think truth is an atmosphere.”
“I’m more interested in perception than fact.”
“Healing is a narrative imposed after the fact.”
They nodded.
They wrote nothing down.
Occasionally, someone pressed harder.
“Is the lover real?”
I smiled.
“All lovers are real to the people who remember them.”
Which revealed nothing.
Perfectly.
THE PERFORMANCE OF DISCLOSURE
There’s a trick to these things —
appearing open while remaining intact.
I learned to speak in soft abstractions, to suggest depth without granting access. I discussed memory, the slipperiness of the self, and the ethics of exposure.
I never talked about pain.
Not because it wasn’t there —
But because pain, once explained, becomes consumable.
And I was done feeding it to strangers.
THE ENDING THAT REFUSED TO END
Critics argued about the book’s final chapter.
Some called it unresolved.
Others called it brave.
One reviewer wrote:
“The author denies the reader catharsis, insisting instead on ambiguity as an ethical stance.”
I underlined that sentence.
It sounded intentional.
It wasn’t.
I simply stopped writing when I ran out of ways to obscure myself elegantly.
The ending didn’t arrive.
I did.
And now, when people ask what the book is really about, I tell them the truth, the smallest truth, the only one I trust:
“It’s about what happens when you survive something
and refuse to turn it into an explanation.”
They usually thank me.
They usually look disappointed.
Which tells me I did it right.