I just finished "The Memory Palace" by Mira Bartok. This book caught my eye because of the underlying story of forgiveness between two daughters and their mother. Every family has their issues and it's painful to see families torn apart and not speaking but stories like this shows that there is hope for every family to find a way back to each other.Mira and her sister were raised in a stressful family to say the least. Once a musical prodigy, their mother suffered from schizophrenia and to escape they went to play at their grandparents house who were a pair to be reckoned with as well. Mira seemed to get dragged into all the family drama while her sister lived in a world of make believe and seemed oblivious to it all. As the girls entered college the stress of their mothers disease became too much for them. She harrassed them and threatened to kill herself if they didn't come home. The girls had to make a choice and cut themselves off from their mother. They changed their names and disappeared. Mira kept a post office box and continued to write her mother without ever revealing where she had moved to.
The book is a back and forth between life now for the girls and glimpses back to their lives growing up. When Mira received word that her mother was ill and dying the girls went to be by her side in the hospital. They found keys to a storage unit that their mother had filled over the years and was full of their childhood memories. Toys, letters, photos that their mother had kept which brought their memories flooding back to them.
Somewhere in all of this the girls find forgiveness and realization of how their mother was robbed of her life by schizophrenia and as a reader you see the real effects of this disease on the person and their family. They will never get those years back but at the end of their mother's life there was peace and hope for anyone else who needs to find that peace within themselves and their family.
http://books.simonandschuster.ca/Memory-Palace/Mira-Bartok/9781439183311
Nice review. But might I add how the incredible artwork adds greatly to the brilliant structure, as well as, the narrative of this book. "Somewhere in all of this the girls find forgiveness..." That place is found in how this book illustrates the parallel minds and artistry Bartok and her mother share. The chapters all begin with some of Bartok's mother's writing, which at once is very disturbing, but also beautiful and lyrical. Both of their minds were exquisite, the difference being that Mira was not ill. When viewed through this lens, the reader is made that much more aware of the fine line between brilliance and madness.
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