“Heart Berries: A Memoir”, by Terese Marie Mailhot

 

160 pages, Counterpoint, ISBN-13: 978-1619023345

Heart Berries: A Memoir is the debut book from the Canadian First Nation writer Terese Marie Mailhot and describes her troubled childhood, tumultuous motherhood and adult struggles with mental health and personal identity. Critics and readers have, as far as I can see, fallen all over themselves to praise this book to the stars as a raw, honest work of a Woman With Issues. And it’s true that Mailhot’s memoires give insight as to her innermost thoughts and struggles, things that are not to be belittled or taken lightly. This explains the book’s structure for, while officially divided into 11 chapters, the whole thing is really a kind of stream-of-consciousness strand in which the writer’s voice mimics the reality of her world of an indigenous woman as she struggles with mental issues and poor taste in men.

I’m not the only one to notice this, either, for Minnesota’s Star Tribune described Mailhot’s writing as “spooky and powerful…although many critics have described this book with stuttering superlatives, readers will differ on whether it’s poetic or incoherent, brilliant self-examination or wordy narcissism”. I think I fall into the later category, mostly due to her style, which are lots of short, jabbing sentences, like I was being poked by a beefy wrestler in the temple with an iron thimble on his finger (this is the same reason I don’t like Hemingway, either). Her habit of starting each essay as if it were part of a conversation that I just stumbled into was jarring, as well, and I felt like I had to spend several pages catching up before I could join in. And she keeps talking to “You”, but I quickly lost track over which inadequate man “You” is supposed to be at any given time. There are so many.

Sooooo…I dunno; after completing this book in a single sitting – I mean, its only 160 pages – I still don’t know what makes this woman tick, except, perhaps for sheer stubbornness and to avenge herself in print on all those men who Done Her Wrong.