Heart Berries (Mailhot) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Don't be fooled by the title. Terese Marie Mailhot's memoir…is a sledgehammer.… Heart Berries has a mixture of vulnerability and rage, sexual yearning and artistic ambition, swagger and self-mockery.… [Mailhot] is unsparing to everyone, especially herself.… Her experiments with structure and language …are in the service of trying to find new ways to think about the past, trauma, repetition and reconciliation, which might be a way of saying a new model for the memoir.… So much of what Mailhot is moving toward here still feels nascent—the book wants a tighter weave, more focus. But give me narrative power and ambition over tidiness any day.
Parul Sehgal - New York Times


Sometimes a writer’s voice is so distinctive, so angry and messy yet wise, that her story takes on the kind of urgency that makes you turn pages faster and faster. Terese Marie Mailhot has one of those voices, and her memoir about being raised on a Canadian reservation and coming to understand what it means to be an indigenous person in modern times is breathtaking.
Esquire


A luminous, poetic memoir.
Entertainment Weekly


Poetic is an oft-used descriptor of lovely writing, and this book seems to be something more striking than the word signifies: a memoir and a poem, a haunting and dazzlingly written narrative of Mailhot’s growing up on a reservation in the Pacific Northwest.
Huffington Post


Terese Marie Mailhot's cathartic, moving Heart Berries is one of the bravest and most fearless of such books. Her coming-of-age [novel] … carries larger, universal lessons for the human spirit and its survival. A necessary book. — Rick Simonson, The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA
Indie Next List


Mailhot’s first book defies containment and categorization. In titled essays, it is a poetic memoir told in otherworldly sentences.… Not shy, nor raw, nor typical in any way, this is a powerfully crafted and vulnerable account of living and writing about it.
Booklist


Mailhot fearlessly addresses intimately personal issues with a scorching honesty derived from psychological pain and true epiphany.… An elegant, deeply expressive meditation infused with humanity and grace.
Kirkus Reviews