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fiandaca 's review for:
Heart Berries: A Memoir
by Terese Marie Mailhot
I reserve the right to adjust the number of stars I give this memoir as I think more about it and it settles into me. I should also mention that I listened to the audio version and perhaps that impacted my ability to understand the book.
I wanted to like this book a lot, but the structure and organization were off-putting to me. I didn’t like how non-linear it was because my confusion as to what was happening when and who certain characters were interrupted my appreciation of Mailhot’s painful dive and resurgence. I also did not like that most (all?) of it was a letter to her lover, whom I wanted her to be strong enough to get over and to stop allowing him to use her.
I’m going to sit with my dislike of the structure and organization, and I’m going to read other reviews, and I’m going to ask myself if this discomfort and lack of appreciation are really my looking firmly through my white lens and having trouble finding value in a native woman’s/this native woman’s manner of self-expression.
There were also a lot of things I liked: Mailhot’s impressively honest accounting of the way she hurt others; the powerful way she conveyed to the reader how heartbreaking it was to lose her older son and its effect on her self-esteem and mothering; the uncomfortable fascination with her own annihilation (which, thankfully, she got over); her moving descriptions of who her mother was and the complex relationship they had. And so much more.
I wanted to like this book a lot, but the structure and organization were off-putting to me. I didn’t like how non-linear it was because my confusion as to what was happening when and who certain characters were interrupted my appreciation of Mailhot’s painful dive and resurgence. I also did not like that most (all?) of it was a letter to her lover, whom I wanted her to be strong enough to get over and to stop allowing him to use her.
I’m going to sit with my dislike of the structure and organization, and I’m going to read other reviews, and I’m going to ask myself if this discomfort and lack of appreciation are really my looking firmly through my white lens and having trouble finding value in a native woman’s/this native woman’s manner of self-expression.
There were also a lot of things I liked: Mailhot’s impressively honest accounting of the way she hurt others; the powerful way she conveyed to the reader how heartbreaking it was to lose her older son and its effect on her self-esteem and mothering; the uncomfortable fascination with her own annihilation (which, thankfully, she got over); her moving descriptions of who her mother was and the complex relationship they had. And so much more.