Helpful Score: 3
I listened to this on audio CD. The narrator did a great job with Ms. Bartok's prose, but a huge, huge drawback is that you miss seeing the author's artwork which is part of the print edition. A sad and haunting memoir, it knocked me off my feet. Highly recommend.
The Memory Palace is a memoir which tells of Mira Bartok's life growing up and living with a mother who suffered from schizophrenia . The book begins at the end as Mira rediscovers her mother who is nearing the end of her life. It then proceeds to describe the process of their life in snapshots as rooms in Mira's "memory palace."
The memory palace is a tool that associates our memories with a concrete place and object. Your palace has rooms, and each room has a significant object which triggers memories and emotions. Mira uses this tool as she struggles to rediscover her mother and also her own memories as she recovers from a head injury.
This book is a difficult read because of the strong emotions it elicits. The book makes you cringe at the extremely difficult situation Mira and her sister live with. Yet the book also talks about her overriding love for her mother, her lifelong desire to be able to help her mother, and the heartbreaking decisions she made to survive the situation.
Despite the strong emotions in the book or really maybe because of them, it is a also hard book to put down. I wanted to protect Mira and her sister. I wanted to help their mother. I wanted to question the people around them to see what more could have been done. I imagined what I would have done. I wasn't ready to be done when the book ended because I want to know what happened after.
This is a story told from the heart and meant to be read from the heart.
First posted on my blog: http://memoriesfrombooks.blogspot.com/
The memory palace is a tool that associates our memories with a concrete place and object. Your palace has rooms, and each room has a significant object which triggers memories and emotions. Mira uses this tool as she struggles to rediscover her mother and also her own memories as she recovers from a head injury.
This book is a difficult read because of the strong emotions it elicits. The book makes you cringe at the extremely difficult situation Mira and her sister live with. Yet the book also talks about her overriding love for her mother, her lifelong desire to be able to help her mother, and the heartbreaking decisions she made to survive the situation.
Despite the strong emotions in the book or really maybe because of them, it is a also hard book to put down. I wanted to protect Mira and her sister. I wanted to help their mother. I wanted to question the people around them to see what more could have been done. I imagined what I would have done. I wasn't ready to be done when the book ended because I want to know what happened after.
This is a story told from the heart and meant to be read from the heart.
First posted on my blog: http://memoriesfrombooks.blogspot.com/
This is a magnificent memoir of survival. That any one individual could survive an entire childhood through adulthood experience with a paranoid schitzophrenic mother and survive is a statement to the intelligence,
perseverence and determination of the author, Mira Bartok.
perseverence and determination of the author, Mira Bartok.
