This article deals with four autobiographical texts by the Belgian writer Françoise Mallet-Jo-ris (1930-2017): Lettre à moi-même (1963), La Maison de papier (1970), J'aurais voulu jouer de l'accordéon (1975) and La double confidence (2000). These texts, despite being inspired by the writer's life experiences, are far from Philippe Lejeune's autobiographical model because the author, instead of talking about herself, narrates about others. The difficulties of speaking about her own life determines the somewhat unusual character of these texts: they are ambiguous genres that are placed between autobiography, memories, intimate diary, essay, biography and chronicle. In the analysis, I focus the author's choice of theme (literary work, life of others, biography of Marcelina Debordes-Valmore) and form (hybrid genres, mosaic structure, fragmentarism) which makes this unique "writing about oneself" so original. I also try to find out why the author is unable to write about herself and how that influences the shape of her autobiographical texts.