A review by ahexalane
Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot

3.0

This is a book about someone making bad choices and seemingly having no self-awareness about them. In the afterword, she admits that she specifically self-censored her impulse to write something healing into the text (like kind reminders that certain happenings weren't her fault), but she was trying to craft an "aesthetic." The aesthetic she has created, in my view, is dark and non-redemptive, cyclical; no catharsis, no conclusions, no greater meaning. It is a shrine to a moment stuck in time that is full of pain and no clear endings. In the afterword, she admits that creating this was her main drive, which seems to me to be a nihilistic and self-perpetuating worldview about the meaning of pain.

I think this approach might have little general appeal, and the literary exercise of it feels a bit self-important, which grates beside the ego speeches in the text. Probably, the worst issue is the title and the book description, and its categorization as a memoir, which are misleading. As a creative writing exercise, it's good. She succeeded in crafting something cohesive and whole. But I am left asking who this is for, and why. If you believe in the hopelessness and endless perpetuation of pain, or if you're an abusive person, and see things from a self-centered, self-justified point of view, you'll love it.