fictional memoir
Made-up life story
A fictional memoir is a novel written in the form of autobiography—a made-up narrator recounting their supposed life story.
The genre borrows memoir's intimate, confessional voice while freeing the author from factual constraints: The book reads like someone's actual memories, but the protagonist never existed.
Distinguished from actual memoirs that take liberties with facts, fictional memoirs are understood from the start as invented.
- unreliable narratorStoryteller whose credibility wavers
- identity crisisLoss of personal certainty
- family secretsConcealed household truths
- creative nonfictionFact-based artistic prose
- life storyAccount of someone's existence
lyrical prose · metafiction · stream of consciousness · inner monologue · inner life · self-reflection · fragmented narrative · nostalgia · flashback · looking back · autofiction · first person · introspection · existential questioning · emotional resonance · poetic language · bildungsroman · social commentary
fictional memoirautobiography
Self-penned life narrative
personal history · oral history · eyewitness account · historical record · sworn testimony
fiction, fictional, fictionalize, fictionalized, fictionalization, fictive, fictitious, fictitiously, memoir