Heart Berries in Around the World in 80 Books

Nov 27, 2019 Nina ( picturetalk321 ) rated it it was ok

Shelves: genre-non-fiction, usa, a-reviewed, author-woman, author-ofcolour, z-read-2019, author-indigenous, z-challenge-2019-reading-women, z-challenge2019bingo-reading-women, genre-memoir

I found this a struggle and finished it only in order to fulfill my last outstanding Reading Women Challenge 2019 rubric: Book by an indigenous author. And for challenging me to open my mind to something new, I give this two stars.

However, the modernist, elliptic, interior style is not speaking to me right now, and the second-person address found throughout (written to the author's on-again-off-again lover and father of her child) was very grating to me. This book feels to me as if it's written I found this a struggle and finished it only in order to fulfill my last outstanding Reading Women Challenge 2019 rubric: Book by an indigenous author. And for challenging me to open my mind to something new, I give this two stars.

However, the modernist, elliptic, interior style is not speaking to me right now, and the second-person address found throughout (written to the author's on-again-off-again lover and father of her child) was very grating to me. This book feels to me as if it's written in the midst of emotional anguish, and to me this was just too unresolved. I needed more retrospective putting-into-perspective and, English panto-like, I kept wanting to yell at the narrator, "Don't go back to this man yet again, no, no!" I can see the philosophical reasons for staying with trauma and pain, and the many blurbs attest to the attraction this writing has for a lot of readers -- but just not for me right now.

The narrative jumps between time lines (relationship with author's mother in childhood and youth, with other relations, with previous and subsequent lovers, with her sons) and large chunks of experience are left out (the aforementioned ellipses), to wit: the author's study and work at various institutions of higher education.

Warning: there is child abuse, coming right towards the end of the book -- but this too fizzles out somewhat. I can see the intellectual and ethical arguments for leaving out details of abuse experience but this book doesn't really make them; I didn't understand why the issue gets raised and then dropped.

I'm not a fan of memoirs which didn't help as this is a memoir. To me, there is too much of me-me-me in me-moirs. This text made no concessions to me as its reader.

Format: Pleasant semi-floppy US print edition, with a nice sticky-matt texture to the cover. There are two front covers: the matt one is narrower than the book and reveals a second shiny-card insert with many glowing reviews excerpted on it. The cover design irritated my eyes as I kept thinking it was out-of-focus but it's fruit outlined by their cast shadows; I did not realise until I had finished reading that the fruit were arranged in a heart shape (title - duh!). Cover design: Donna Cheng. ...more

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