recovery memoir

This is also called sobriety memoir.   I can see no real difference between the two although the recovery memoir perhaps focuses on the the experience of the writer who has personally travelled the road from addiction to recovery, whereas the sobriety memoir gives more weight to the joys and discoveries that come from being sober.  These two styles of memoir follow in the footsteps of crisis memoir (an account of a harrowing experience in one’s life) and misery memoir (an account of childhood sufferings).

In writing memoirs it is the emotional truth of the writing that matters, not the factual truth.  This has caused a few memoirists and publishers to have difficulty defending their books when errors of fact are discovered.  Memoirs have had a lot to do in the blurring of fiction and non-fiction.

These books are read in the way in which we still read self-help books. Not once but many times. There are mantras that are designed to help the sober-serious on their path to sobriety, and reading and re-reading the book is one of the techniques that can help. A successful book can have quite a following.