The Memory Palace
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
In the tradition of The Glass Castle, two sisters confront schizophrenia in this poignant literary memoir about family and mental illness. Through stunning prose and original art, The Memory Palace captures the love between mother and daughter, the complex meaning of truth, and family’s capacity for forgiveness “People have abandoned their loved ones for much less than you’ve been through,” Mira Bartók is told at her mother’s memorial service. It is a poignant observation about the relationship between Mira, her sister, and their mentally ill mother. Before she was struck with schizophrenia at the age of nineteen, beautiful piano protégé Norma Herr had been the most vibrant personality in the room. She loved her daughters and did her best to raise them well, but as her mental state deteriorated, Norma spoke less about Chopin and more about Nazis and her fear that her daughters would be kidnapped, murdered, or raped. When the girls left for college, the harassment escalated—Norma called them obsessively, appeared at their apartments or jobs, threatened to kill herself if they did not return home. After a traumatic encounter, Mira and her sister were left with no choice but to change their names and sever all contact with Norma in order to stay safe. But while Mira pursued her career as an artist—exploring the ancient romance of Florence, the eerie mysticism of northern Norway, and the raw desert of Israel—the haunting memories of her mother were never far away. Then one day, a debilitating car accident changes Mira’s life forever. Struggling to recover from a traumatic brain injury, she was confronted with a need to recontextualize her life—she had to relearn how to paint, read, and interact with the outside world. In her search for a way back to her lost self, Mira reached out to the homeless shelter where she believed her mother was living and discovered that Norma was dying. Mira and her sister traveled to Cleveland, where they shared an extraordinary reconciliation with their mother that none of them had thought possible. At the hospital, Mira discovered a set of keys that opened a storage unit Norma had been keeping for seventeen years. Filled with family photos, childhood toys, and ephemera from Norma’s life, the storage unit brought back a flood of previous memories that Mira had thought were lost to her forever.
Reviews with the most likes.
Mira Bartok's real name is not Mira Bartok. Nor does her sister Natalia go by her real name. Both women changed their names so their mother could not track them down.
Both women had to start new lives with new names and completely cut off contact with their mother in order to survive.
Bartok's mother, Norma Herr, is the center of this memoir. Herr was a magnificent pianist who got blindsided by schizophrenia when she was in her early twenties. By then, she had married and had two daughters. Her life and the lives of her two young daughters became a downward spiral of hospitalizations and medications and homelessness.
Bartok begins the story at the end, when Bartok reconnects with her mother in her mother's last days. In the process, Bartok discovers that her mother has kept a storage room for all these years, a room filled with the miscellany of their lives. It is by sifting through items from the storage room, her “memory palace”, that Bartok tells the story of her mother's life and her own life.
Very powerful story.
