Autobiography of a Marguerite

Autobiography of a Marguerite is an innovative book-length poem about chronic illness, familial dysfunction and the discovery of a sense of self by Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle, author of Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life. This acclaimed 2014 debut is republished alongside her new third book, Leaves Fall Off to Create Drama. View a special offer on both books.

We are made up of stories, but which ones belong to us? What are the boundaries between our bodies and the outside world? In Autobiography of a Marguerite, the narrator, whose doctor tells her that there is ‘no cause and no cure’ for her autoimmune illness, struggles to separate herself from her troubled mother, the Marguerite of the book’s title. In this profound work about illness and family dysfunction, Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle’s experiments with form – overlapping voices, footnotes, fragments, found text and photographs – illustrate the struggle for autonomy and sense of self, and the repressed grief of chronic ill health. Her writing makes visible the often hidden experience of disability, so that the reader becomes both a witness and an actor, piecing together a narrative that challenges and reimagines what a work of autobiography can be.

Recursive, clear-eyed and flatly funny, Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle captures here all the strangeness, fragility and wry sufferings of a young life.
Jessica Au

Like nothing else you’ll encounter. A meditation on pain and illness made strange by close proximity, a child and parent leaking into each other… Butcher-McGunnigle has developed a brand new way of creating story to make this stunning work possible.
Pip Adam

One of the most innovative New Zealand books published in recent years.
Siobhan Harvey, Booknotes

Astonishing… This poetry is unlike anything I have seen.
Paula Green

A grand achievement. The writing goes to the aching heart of disconnection and of longing for repair… Butcher-McGunnigle has created a crooked beauty out of shards.
Sue Wootton, Takahe