Heart Berries: A Memoir - Terese Marie Mailhot

Title: Heart Berries: A Memoir
Author: Terese Marie Mailhot*
Pages: 160
Genre: Non-fiction, Biography, Memoir
Edition: Hardcover
Source: Library:

Description:
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. (via Goodreads)

Thoughts:  I really enjoyed this straightforward memoir of Ms. Mailhot's life up until this point.  While the book isn't presented in a straightforward manner, it is straightforward in that you know what she is talking about in each chapter, as each chapter has a certain focus.

I also liked that she didn't sugarcoat her life in British Columbia (she grew up on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation not far from where I grew up and live; it is probably about an hour drive from my place) and that she acknowledges her dysfunctional as a cause for her depression.

Bottom line: It is very short (under 200 pages) and very poignant.  Warnings for description of suicide among other things.  Highly recommended.

Rating: 4.25/5

* the copy I had didn't include the introduction nor the afterword

The Princess Diarist - Carrie Fisher

Title: The Princess Diarist
Author: Carrie Fisher
Pages:257
Published: 2016
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir
Edition: Hardcover
Source: Library

Description: When Carrie Fisher recently discovered the journals she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved—plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naiveté, and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Today, her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon is indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a (sort-of) regular teenager.

With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher’s intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time—and what developed behind the scenes. And today, as she reprises her most iconic role for the latest Star Wars trilogy, Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and endlessly quotable, The Princess Diarist brims with the candor and introspection of a diary while offering shrewd insight into the type of stardom that few will ever experience. (via Goodreads)

Thoughts: I quite liked the book.  It was a fairly quick read, but also informative.  I generally don't read celebrity memoirs but due to the publicity that the book got this past fall and the author's death this past December, I felt the need to read the book.  She clearly was a very good writer and with help from an editor, it became a well-received book.  I haven't read her other books, but clearly she had a talent for the written word.

Bottom line: If you enjoy reading celebrity memoirs, I would definitely recommend the book to you, if you haven't already.  If you haven't, you might enjoy this one.  Recommended.

Rating: 3.5/5

You Will Not Have My Hate - Antoine Leiris

Title: You Will Not Have My Hate
Author: Antoine Leiris ; translated by Sam Taylor
Pages: 131
Published: 2016
Genre: Memoir, Non-Fiction
Edition: Hardcover
Source: Library

Description:  On 13 November 2015, Antoine Leiris’s wife, Hélène, was killed, along with 88 other people at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris, when three men armed with guns and suicide bombs opened fire on the unsuspecting crowd at a rock concert. Three days later, Leiris, a young journalist, wrote an open letter on Facebook addressed to his wife’s killers. Leiris refused to be cowed or to let his 17-month-old son’s life be defined by Hélène’s murder. He refused to let the killers have their way. ‘For as long as he lives, this little boy will insult you with his happiness and freedom,’ he wrote. Instantly, that short Facebook post caught fire. It was shared over two hundred thousand times and was reported on all over the world. In his beautiful and moving defiance of the terrorists who had killed his wife, Leiris became an international hero to everyone searching desperately for a way to deal with the horror of the attacks. (via Goodreads)

Thoughts: I don't know if saying that I enjoyed a memoir about a husband going through the early stages of grieving of his wife is appropriate.  It was definitely poignant, even though it was a short read.  I got a sense of him trying to make things as normal as possible for his young son, Melvil, who was about 17 months at the time.  I don't think words can really describe how it felt to read this book.

Bottom line: A powerful, but short book and alters how we should act during a time that is becoming incredibly scary.  Highly recommended.

Rating: 4.75/5