Heart Berries

I enjoyed this.
A harsh and profound memoir, Terese Marie Mailhot's style is pared back and hides nothing.
The simple sentence structures and formatting lay bare her history - an American Indian woman, struggling against oppression (against her culture and individually) and battling mental health issues. Seemingly simple, but so not.

Intrigued from the first page, could not stop reading. A real insight to the pains we all store internally and externally and how we learn to cope with all that life throws at us.

I didn't love this but it was very interesting and I acknowledge that it is a very well written if not quite completely polished memoir. I'm a bit hit and miss on dreamy prose especially when it strays into stream of consciousness type writing, so there were times when the style of this almost lost my interest. The overall story however kept me reading through this short, poetic read. One that requires concentration and I applaud the searing honesty.

These scathing essays lay bare hard and frank emotions of a young women detached from appropriate relationships, suffering PTS, and bipolar disorder. It’s story is raw and honest (sounds cliche I know) but also poetic and cathartic.
It’ll take me a while to process this one, its not something to love or hate but a renching days read of a harden yet vulnerable human spirit.

: This book is as beautiful as it is brutal. Mailhot’s writing is heart wrenching and poetic, delicately illustrating the most difficult times in her life with both lightness and gravity. I read this in one sitting, drawn into a memoir unlike any other I’ve read before. She speaks of her time in a psychiatric unit, spent after considering suicide during a bad relationship. Her life growing up on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation, the hardships her family faced and her desperation to escape. Her experiences in academia and the solace she found in her writing. I think the parts I was most shocked at was her relationship with Casey and the stories of her children (I don’t want to give too much away here but if you’ve read,I’m eager to discuss!!). Mailhot is a First Nations Canadian and I believe the first First Nations writer who’s work I’ve read. Her story and experience is so powerful and it is important that she is heard. I absolutely loved the stream of consciousness style of writing of this book. It is short, but every single word is calculated and meaningful, packing a punch that will guarantee you won’t forget about this story anytime soon.
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Even if memoirs are your usual jam, I really recommend picking up Heart Berries.

I don’t even know how to begin explaining this book. The memoirs of Therese Marie Mailhot, Heart Berries is a book about love, pain and I guess figuring out who you are and it’s impossible to deny just how brilliant this book is.

How Mailhot describes how she feels practically makes you feel it too. The pain, the heartbreak and the sickening feeling keeps you captivated to the very end of this book. Her prose is so poetic and packed with the gamut of emotions she feels, rhis book takes you on the emotional rollercoaster with her and it’s not a ride you can easily stop.

You don’t read many books that are so raw and honest and from this perspective often and done so incredibly well. Mailhot is clearly an incredible talent and her memoir is short but filled to the brim with it as she delivers the hardest truths in her own written word about motherhood, love and mental health. If you can handle the subject matter as there many triggers, I highly recommend this book.

A really unusual book which is quite haunting and stays in the mind, some wonderful prose. This is a book that you could re read several times and get more from it each time. A very enjoyable read.

Wow. Exhilarating, thought provoking, and hard to read at times but a real gut wrencher of a story. But a story of hope, development and strength

Heart Berries is a memoir centred around mental health and relationships. Mailhot doesn't shy away from revealing her deepest thoughts, desires, jealousies, and secrets in this memoir, and so it's both a difficult and engaging read. The subjects range from relationships, to family, to assault, to postpartum depression, to care, to psychiatric units, and more.

Whilst this book is technically really good, personally I think it's better to read it in one sitting as I found that I wasn't drawn back into the book when I put it down, and so it actually took me a few weeks to read despite how short it is. Perhaps it was the fact that there were often throwaway metaphors or confusing time skips which didn't have much pattern or meaning, but often I found myself on the fence of whether I was enjoying the book or not.

Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing and Netgalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

Very interesting read, if a little bit harsh on the mind at times. This memoir certainly gets the point across with a distinct style. It reads like a bare sole that can't stop leaking bits of itself. Truly memorable and in a way I'm glad it wasn't longer!

An honest and in places hard to read memoir. This is a short book about problems in life and the struggle with mental illness. This book is an enlightening eye opener that I will remember for a long time.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

Though beautifully written, this was both hard to read and difficult to follow in places. It didn't live up to my expectations therefore and I'm probably just as disappointed in myself that I have struggled with it so much. Doubtless it deserves all the praiseworthy reviews heaped upon it, just not for me.

A brave, raw well-written memoir written in a very honest unique way. This memoir deals with a lot of mind changing stuff that many do no;t like to talk about such as abuse and mental illness. recommended.