I enjoy reading memoirs, and this title drew me in. I was unfamiliar with this author before reading her book, but as I got deeper into her book, I got to know her and her life. I applaud anyone who can be authentic about something so personal.

The author of this very candid memoir is a talented singer from a family of talented musicians so that is what drew me to this book. At first I felt like I was reading a diary of a young person with all the typical complaints about parents and siblings and love interests. And as typical of a young person's diary I felt blame was put on everyone else around her for disappointments or failures with very little self reflection or awareness. So as I was trying to get through the book, a huge shift happened that made me view her through a more compassionate lens -- it was the moment when she became a mother and had a difficult delivery and at the same time was dealing with losing her own mother to cancer. I was very moved by what she shared regarding how she was experiencing these pivotal life events. And then as I read on it digressed a bit again to complaints about her brother and father thrown in and I started to lose interest again. I would say read this book if you are a huge fan yet at the same time be aware that there will things that will make you love her even more and other complaints that may have you thinking she still needs to do some growing up. Thank you to Netgalley and Hachette Books for a preview copy. I have shared my own opinion.

𝑰𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖’𝒓𝒆 𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒊𝒔𝒕, 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒌𝒊𝒅𝒔 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒆𝒏𝒅 𝒖𝒑 𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒔, 𝒕𝒐𝒐. 𝑻𝒐 𝒑𝒖𝒕 𝒊𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒘𝒂𝒚, 𝒐𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖’𝒓𝒆 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒊𝒓𝒄𝒖𝒔, 𝒊𝒕’𝒔 𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒈𝒆𝒕 𝒐𝒖𝒕.

Born to folk singers/songwriters, Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III, Canadian singer Martha and her brother Rufus certainly remained in the circus. In Stories I Might Regret Telling You, there is plenty of family drama, personal struggles and music. Both siblings are gifted artists, with Rufus being a bit more well known here in the USA. I actually enjoyed the honest insight into Martha’s life and the sibling rivalry, admiration of her famous older brother, the need to find her way out of his shadow but the real story was her upbringing, the relationship with each parent, and her own future love life. After a rocky marriage, her parents divorced, and Martha lived mostly with her mother in their native Montreal, visiting her father in New York, sometimes in London. There was a distance, emotionally, between she and her father, Loudon, but when it came to her mother, she says ‘there were scenes’. Certainly, Martha and Rufus grew up in an unconventional household. Oversharing, breaking parenting rules, a much more bohemian upbringing that while frustrating and hurtful could also be magical. No doubt the people who came and went influenced her future career.

Martha holds her own, and while she and Rufus work together in the industry, the biggest influence seems to be her mother Kate, on both of them but in completely different ways. Growing up, she often felt mediocre in her mother’s eyes but she didn’t seem to have the big, hungry ambition that came naturally to Rufus. Rufus seemed to be adored by their mother Kate, leaving Martha to feel like an outsider at times. Certainly, as business goes, she wasn’t one to mold herself into what commercial success requires and as a daughter of famous musicians, her journey seems to be a lot harder than sons of rock royalty. Her father, ‘often retreated when he was most needed’, and the pain of such neglect and often cold comments, certainly comes across in this memoir. Loudon, as a songwriter, certainly expressed himself in his art, painful words in his song lyrics, exposing how he feels about his children, how could a heart not harden against such mean, raw honesty, and be left reeling in agony? It isn’t a book of whining, more a purging of past hurts. She certainly admits her own faults and weaknesses while sharing the rise of her own star, choosing not to be eclipsed by her brother, whom she absolutely loves. There are stories of her performances, sacrifices, her friendship with Lorca Cohen (Leonard’s daughter) that soured, deaths, births, drugs, marriage, building a family, and a stream of heartbreak. All the life experiences that make for good songs.

Martha is a force herself, sharing her journey of self-discovery, and the devastation of losing her mother; a moment that taught her how much she loved and needed Kate, despite their differences. The timing was incredibly hard, as at the time she was coping with pregnancy and the birth of a child who had serious health struggles. This memoir is a reckoning with the past, and a dream for the future, one filled with her children and blooming love, while still untangling herself from her own broken marriage to her sons’ father. As the books comes to the end, we find Martha growing older, accepting herself more, and coming to terms with the distance between she and her father. There is so much she learned from her mother, things meant, likely, to toughen her up for the life she has chosen. Her father has left her with advice too, even if he and his children struggle to connect, heal. Always there will be music- it is in her blood, it is how she communicates to the world and her story certainly isn’t over. This memoir is an engaging read about the rise of talented Martha Wainwright, who has released critically acclaimed albums and is a star in her own right!

Publication Date: March 29, 2022

Hachette Books

I love the Wainwright family and have been a fan of Martha and Rufus for over 20 years. I have enjoyed watching Martha's career and when I found out she was writing her biography/memoir, I had to read it! It is incredible as I expected and loved reading more about her. A+

Martha has long been my favorite of the Wainwright/McGarrigle clan, at least as far as music goes. I always found Rufus too theatrical for my taste and Loudon and Kate & Anna were just a bit too safe and boring. Then Martha arrived on my radar around 2005 with the gumption to title her first commercially released EP “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole”. Now, this I could get behind. Rufus is the better songwriter; Loudon is more prolific…but Martha has soul and grit.
Often, when the children of famous people write about their lives, it comes across as whining about their horrible upbringing in their giant house, traveling the globe and obtaining possessions and experiences most people could never dream to have. Wainwright occasionally comes across this way, but for the most part, she escapes this pitfall. This is accomplished through her writing style, which, while not exactly masterful, works well because reading Stories I Might Regret Telling You comes off more like listening to her tell you about her life over coffee.
The title of this memoir is apt because Martha does tell a lot of stories that are very personal (but anyone who has listened to her music could tell you that would be the case). Much contained herein will likely not make some of the characters in her life happy, but it does keep things interesting and makes you care about this dysfunctional family in a way that is rare for memoirs. Even Loudon, who comes across as a bit of a BMFA here manages to gain some feels from the reader on the rare occasion that he does the right thing. None in the family escape Martha’s pen here, including Martha herself, who takes herself down a peg or two often enough to seem honest. Of course, this is one point of view, so now I feel the need to read more from the family to get other perspectives.
If you’re looking for sex, drugs and rock & roll, these things are all here in the pages of Stories I Might Regret Tell You. But this is not a tale of drunken debauchery found in your average Led Zeppelin biography. This is a story about life, family and the struggles inherent in both. Wainwright’s story is funny, tragic at time, interesting and touching. She tells it in a way that makes you feel like you’d want to have a beer with her in a dark pub and see what comes out of her mouth. It might make you uncomfortable, but it’s going to keep your attention and you’ll likely be a better person for it.
With the release of her memoir at the ripe young age of 45 (only 2 years older than myself), Martha Wainwright all but ensures another chapter to her story at some point in the future. I will be picking it up because, while most of the juicy stuff is likely contained here, I’ve become interested in the life of Martha and her family; I want to know what happens next and how they’re doing. And to be honest, this is exactly what you want from a memoir. Thanks to Netgalley and Hachette Books for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for a fair review.

A simple memoir without much literary depth, instead a very simple retelling of events. I enjoyed getting to know Martha's story but I don't feel like I got to know Martha herself at all - there was no personality in her words, just a list of facts and events. The title didn't make much sense to me either - most stories were quite reserved, not sure what she might regret in these pages.

I really loved this book. Martha does a great job of taking the reader along with her on a journey to becoming her own artist in the shadow of her mother, father and older brother. Family is already hard enough to deal with, but when you mix in the ability to write and release songs about each other, it adds a whole new twist to the dynamic. This is a great read even if you aren't familiar with Martha or Rufus's or Loudon's or Kate's music. But if you aren't, you're missing out!

Stories I Might Regret Telling You by Martha Wainwright Is a memoir I was drawn to from the cover. I had the immediate sense that this woman (I wasn't familiar with her name and I had no idea what I would find inside the pages) lived a life I would find fascinating. The description further supported this, and once I opened the book itself, it only took a few pages to realize I was right. Ms. Wainwright's memoir is a novel I wanted to read slowly to savor... but I couldn't. I stayed up way too late reading, and then woke up way too early just to return to her words.
Highly recommend!

Stories I Might Regret Telling You is a very candid journey through the life of Canadian artist and performer Martha Wainwright. This autobiography has a phenomenal first impression, which it consistently follows through on for the rest of the book. I fell in love with Wainwright’s style really early on, her tone is playful and conversational, she doesn’t hold back really (save some details from a very recently painful part of her life), and she’s absolutely hysterical - a testament to years of maintaining an authentic stage presence. Wainwright maintains this tone fabulously throughout all 250 pages of her memoir, making it an incredibly easy and lighthearted read, even as she delves into darker and more personal topics.
While the tone of the book is one of its greatest strengths, at some points it is a bit of a weakness as well. A really strong focus on performing the story took away a bit from the telling of it. I would have loved to read more details - several times Wainwright said something along the lines of “shenanigans happened,” and then refused to go into detail! I love shenanigans!! I want to know about them! Wainwright loved to tell us who was present (making this a surely exciting book for fans of the who’s who of 90s folk, more on this in a second) but kept what they actually all did there a mystery. Elaborating more on little vignettes would have made descriptions seem less repetitive - it’s well and fine to know that every man Martha fell in love with was the dirtbag version of some great musician from a generation before, but I felt like I sometimes missed the connection. In the same vein, Rufus didn’t really feel like a lover of attention until I was told about the mirror placed over his piano at a Montreal bar he once played at. Delightful! That all said, every time Wainwright told a story in depth it was captivating (and always hilarious or moving, but usually both).
I highly recommend this book to anyone that enjoys biographies, but especially fans of 90s folk music, or people looking to get into 90s folk music. One really beautiful thing about this book was that it came with a natural soundtrack, of which Wainwright’s records were only the beginning. Every artist that passed through Wainwright’s life was also given a bit of commentary on their music between the pages of her book. She’s led me to discover a whole genre of music I hadn’t appreciated before. I’ve listened to all her favourite songs of her friends and family members, and when I recognized someone in the endless flow of name-drops from Wainwright’s fashionable life, I always got a bit excited. On a similar vein, I recommend this book to people that live in Montreal (or New York or London, but I can’t speak to either of the latter too well). As a young person living in Montreal’s lower plateau, much this book felt a bit like home to me - I could visualize the happenings in about a third of the memoir, and I loved reading about the familiar neighborhoods and streets and most especially the 24 along Sherbrooke (which, like Martha, I also once took to terminate a pregnancy).
This memoir didn’t contain many large revelations for me, but not every book will. The joy that I found in Stories I Might Regret Telling You is the ultimate conclusion that everything will be ok. Martha and I have wildly different lives, but (I really hope I’m not being too arrogant) similar minds. Either that or she’s got a very unique power to be universally relatable. Her contentment at the end of the book sort of feels like it could be mine, giving a chaotic story a sound and peaceful ending.

The author's particular confessional style works a lot better in songs than in book form. I've been listening to her for years, found her through her brother like a lot of other people, so I thought this would be an interesting read and insight into her creative process. To be honest I was a underwhelmed. It reads like a cross between a therapy session and one of those people you meet at parties who tells you all about their wild youth and crazy stories to try to impress you with their edginess, but really just comes across as kind of insecure. Now, there were some funny moments (maybe not haha funny but oh-my-god funny) and she is a likeable, relatable writer. Probably a good editor could have cleaned up what often felt like her processing her conflicted feelings about her mom and her anger (justified, at least from her side of the story) toward her ex. I'll stick to her music rather than wait for a sequel.

Martha Wainwright’s 2005 self-titled album is one of my favourite albums, it’s such a perfect record. I saw her perform at a festival over 15 years ago and I still remember how I felt at the show, she was commanding, confident and sounded amazing. Just like her album and live performances, Martha’s autobiography, Stories I Might Regret Telling You is engaging right off the bat. Martha writes from an honest place and isn’t afraid to show the dark parts of her life as well as her families who have a rich musical history. I feel like I was given a tour of the Wainwright’s family album, Martha takes us through her upbringing in Montreal with her mother’s side of the family, Kate McGarrigle and to New York with her father Loudon Wainwright III. Martha reveals her insecurities and difficulties finding her place amongst such famous siblings, especially her brother Rufus. Despite being famous, Martha comes off as someone I would know in Montreal. She talks about her family, career and partying with some fun interesting name drops. Throughout this bio is the life and death of Martha’s mom which is written in such a humanizing beautiful way. I know who Kate is in Canadian history, but I got to see her as a mom and a regular person that I could relate to. This is a very engaging book from Martha Wainwright, hopefully she feels compelled to share more in the future.

I received this as a e-Galley from NetGalley.

I love a memoir- especially ones about musicians and/or authors. It makes you read or listen to their work differently after. Sometimes in a good way or sometimes in a bad way.

Martha definitely left it all on the page but maybe it needed to be edited a little more? It did ramble at times and gave too much detail that didn't really help or hurt- was just there.

I knew of the author, Martha Wainwright, from the song Set Fire to the Third Bar with Snow Patrol. I suppose I might have listened to Rufus first, but it didn’t factor into my appreciation of her ability. When I saw this book for review on NetGalley, I was curious. I love memoirs and I was intrigued by the synopsis of her story and the title is, of course, titillating. The cover photo even more so. I knew nothing of Martha’s parents or their music, but the promise of insight into growing up in a musical family was appealing. The book is raw and we’re exploring Martha’s tumultuous relationships with her family. It’s an exploration in family dynamics, coming of age, growing into your talent and desires, her missteps, her vices, and reconciliations, betrayals, and loads of exploration of self, how one is shaped by parents, sibling rivalries, friendships and loss. It has all the great elements of a fantastic memoir. At times, there is self-pity and self-indulgence, but isn’t that part of experience, experimentation and growing? I loved it.