Terese Marie Mailhot

This was one of the most brutal, heartfelt, unabashed, memoirs I've ever read. Mailhot rips out her heart for the reader to see and holds nothing back. From her insecurities about being a mother to abuse she had buried as a child to her unwise relationships to growing up native; she bares her entire soul. She manages to convey these truths about her life in the most succinct, powerful way. Not one word is wasted in this memoir. While listening to this I was struck by the beauty of her show more prose.

“I think self-esteem is a white invention to further separate one person from another. It asks people to assess their values and implies people have worth. It seems like identity capitalism.”

“I felt breathless, like every question was a step up a stairway.”

I listened to this short memoir, but now I want to read it; I want my eyes to eat up her words. Her prose is transcendent. Mailhot, hasn't exactly had the easiest of lives, but she is able to convey the beauty in her struggles and challenges. What a writer. I cannot wait to read more from her. I am ready for the Indigenous Renaissance. show less

This is a book which does not employ narrative devices to protect the reader from the discomfort of the truth it carries. The author's prose is pared back to the bone, yet each line is weighted with layers of meaning. It's rather like reading poetry more than a standard memoir.

As I consumed it in audiobook form, I frequently wished for the narrator to slow down and have the cadence of a poetry reading so I could more easily absorb and ponder. It is a book which necessitates repeat show more readings.

The author's story is unapologetic and uninvested in casting herself in a positive light. She is so clearly striving to only communicate the unvarnished truth. What emerges is the deep complexity of human life, and the specific intersectionalities of the author's identity. All the artifice common to the memoir genre is discarded. She shares openly and without hesitation all parts of herself. It was beautiful to partake in. show less

This is a difficult book to read in all senses of the word: in its subject matter, its prose, in Terese Mailhot's determination to write a memoir about misery that isn't a Misery Memoir. I have to confess that I struggled with Heart Berries a great deal. Some sentences, even some passages, were lyrical and incisive; others read like a creative writing student straining for profundity and reaching only the semblance of it. It was only once I reached the passage in which Mailhot mentions her show more diagnosis of bipolar disorder that things clicked for me. I remembered sitting at 3am with a friend who was in the middle of a manic phase and having to let go of any hope of imposing order on her words. Once I did the same here—once I acknowledged that Mailhot was crafting prose which recreated the experience of being in that mental space—the book began to click for me. I still didn't get all of it—I don't think that all of it is for me to get—but Heart Berries is undeniably a powerful read. show less

This is not ordinarily the sort of book I pick up, but I found it powerful and disturbing and heart wrenching to read. Mailhot writes her madness in an extraordinarily compelling way, one that viscerally portrays the abuse and trauma at the heart of her story. Every time I went to put it down, I found myself compelled to pick it up again.

Advanced Reader's Copy provided by Edelweiss.