Memoir as Detective Story
🔎 March Book Club Pick: After a private eye ghosts her, Tracy O’Neill leads the investigation into what happened to the mysterious biological mother she never met
Without further ado or delay1, Memoiring’s Book Club Pick of March 2025 is Tracy O’Neill’s Woman of Interest: A Memoir (Harper One, 2024).
Get a copy of Woman of Interest and RSVP now to discuss it with us and author Tracy O’Neill on Wednesday, April 2 at 6:30pm ET. This live Q&A-style event is free for Memoiring subscribers.
Written like a hardboiled detective novel (by a much lauded prose stylist), this genre-bending memoir is about a writer who, at the height of lockdown in 2020, takes over the work of a private investigator she’s hired to find her birth mother in South Korea.
O’Neill’s noir-ish quest exploring identity, motherhood, and belonging has everything —“a femme fatale of unique proportions, a former CIA operative with a criminal record, and a dogged investigator,” — plus an unexpected folder of evidence dating back 30-some years, and at least one red herring.
I love a narrative propelled by questioning, which is what detectives do. —Tracy O’Neill
What the critics say: It’s a "dark, deeply funny memoir...Dashiell Hammett meets ‘Fleabag’” (The New Yorker Briefly Noted) with “cool, noir-tinted prose shot through with wit and compassion” (Publisher’s Weekly, in a starred review) “about family shadows, writing, and the pursuit of searching for answers we know we might never find” (Oprah Daily). More praise is here. Read an excerpt on Lit Hub.
For Women’s History Month, Tracy has partnered with Echo on this limited edition silk scarf ($195). A sweet $100 from your purchase goes to Allies in Change, a social activist organization and counseling services center seeking to prevent domestic violence. (Memoiring is not taking a cent.) Also feel free to donate directly.
A bit about Tracy O’Neill: In addition to Woman of Interest: A Memoir, she is the author of the novels The Hopeful, one of Electric Literature's Best Novels of 2015, and Quotients, a New York Times New & Noteworthy Book. Tracy was named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her writing has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, the New Yorker, and more. She holds an MFA from the City College of New York; and an MA, an MPhil, and a PhD from Columbia University. She teaches at Vassar College. Go to her website for the whole story!
CRAFT WORKSHOP COMING YOUR WAY IN APRIL 💥
Memoiring’s got a craft workshop coming your way. It’s for writers of memoir. Or fiction. Or those not sure which their book should be and would like to have the benefits explained to them! Save the date of Tuesday, April 22 @ 6:30-7:45pm ET. Details coming soooon!
Don’t forget to RSVP for Memoiring’s author event with Tracy O’Neill. It’s free for Memoiring Substack subscribers. Subscribing is also free. Bring your questions—we especially welcome craft ones!
Want to know what our author events are like? There’s more info here.
Folks who attend Memoiring’s author events are the first to hear about our next book pick.
Thanks for restack, @Victoria Lo Bue and Cold Copy! 🔥
Looking forward to this talk and to reading Woman of Interest!