Heart Berries: A Memoir

This is a very short (less than 150 pages) memoir, and could conceivably be read in one sitting if one was so inclined, and in some ways it was hard to not just sit down and devour it. Terese Marie Mailhot is a beautiful writer, her prose is lyrical and shot through with lines of breathtaking insight and clarity. Even as she recounted some very heavy things, like her mental health breakdown in the wake of a bad breakup and coming to terms with the generational trauma she experienced as a Native American/First Nations woman, the way she wrote about it was honest and compelling and thoughtful. The thing that kept this from being truly great, for me, was its structure. I can deal with but don't always love non-linear storytelling, but find it particularly challenging in memoir. It was difficult to orient myself in when things were happening, where she was along the trajectory of her life at any given moment. It's a valid stylistic choice, of course, but didn't quite work for me as a reader. It was still very good and I would recommend it, but only if you're reading for something with a lot of darkness.