Heart Berries: A Memoir
Ratings9
Average rating3.7
*Canada Reads 2019 Longlist *National Bestseller *New York Times Bestseller *Finalist for the 2018 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction *Finalist for the 2018 Governor General's Literary Awards *Longlisted for the 2019 RBC Taylor Prize *Winner of the Blue Metropolis First Peoples Prize *Winner of the Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature *Winner of the 2019 Whiting Award for Nonfiction *Shortlisted for the 2019 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize *Shortlisted for the 2019 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Nonfiction *A New York Times Editors' Choice *A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2018 *A CBC Best Book of 2018 *A Toronto Star Best Book of 2018 *A Walrus Best Book of 2018 *An NPR Best Book of 2018 *A Chatelaine Best Book of 2018 *A Bustle Best Book of 2018 *A GQ Best Book of 2018 *A Thrillist Best Book of 2018 *A Book Riot Best Book of 2018 *An Electric Lit Best Book of 2018 *An Entropy Best Book of 2018 *A Hill Times Best Book of 2018 *A BookPage Best Book of 2018 *A Library Journal Best Book of 2018 *A Goodreads Best Book of 2018 *A New York Public Library Best Book of 2018 *Named one of the most anticipated books of 2018 by: Chatelaine, Entertainment Weekly, ELLE, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Huffington Post, B*tch, NYLON, BuzzFeed, Bustle, The Rumpus and Goodreads *Selected by Emma Watson as the Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick for March/April 2018 Guileless and refreshingly honest, Terese Mailhot's debut memoir chronicles her struggle to balance the beauty of her Native heritage with the often desperate and chaotic reality of life on the reservation. Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in British Columbia. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Bipolar II, Terese Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father--an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist--who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame. Mailhot "trusts the reader to understand that memory isn't exact, but melded to imagination, pain and what we can bring ourselves to accept." Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story and, in so doing, reestablishes her connection to her family, to her people and to her place in the world.
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This is a very short (less than 150 pages) memoir, and could conceivably be read in one sitting if one was so inclined, and in some ways it was hard to not just sit down and devour it. Terese Marie Mailhot is a beautiful writer, her prose is lyrical and shot through with lines of breathtaking insight and clarity. Even as she recounted some very heavy things, like her mental health breakdown in the wake of a bad breakup and coming to terms with the generational trauma she experienced as a Native American/First Nations woman, the way she wrote about it was honest and compelling and thoughtful. The thing that kept this from being truly great, for me, was its structure. I can deal with but don't always love non-linear storytelling, but find it particularly challenging in memoir. It was difficult to orient myself in when things were happening, where she was along the trajectory of her life at any given moment. It's a valid stylistic choice, of course, but didn't quite work for me as a reader. It was still very good and I would recommend it, but only if you're reading for something with a lot of darkness.
Please don't read my review: I'm male. I'm also too old, too unfeeling insensitive hardhearted uncultured. My opinion is not worth your time: I write it for future me, noone else.
I can see some of the appeal: Mailhot's sentences are often exquisite. But ultimately the story just didn't do it for me: I get it, a little: I know some people blindly chase physical passion as a way to escape their pain; that they make babies as a way to grasp onto a failing relationship (spoiler: this tends not to work out so well). I know that people fight and yell at each other and create drama instead of reaching out and listening. It's just that, well, this isn't that new a story. I know that Mailhot's suffering is genuine and deep; I feel great compassion for her, and admiration for her courage. May her success ease her pain.
Apparently Mailhot started parts of this as fiction, and then later turned it into a memoir. Which could be intriguing, but for me just read as an overly-poetic sometimes-incoherent stream of consciousness. She deals with important heavy subjects, so I feel bad for not liking the style more.
2.5
