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Free Press
January 2011
On Sale: January 11, 2011
320 pages
ISBN: 1439183317
EAN: 9781439183311
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
“ People have abandoned their loved ones for much less than
you’ve been through,” Mira Bartok is told at her mother’s
memorial service. It is a poignant observation about the
relationship between Mira, her sister, and their mentally
ill mother. Before she was struck with schizophrenia at the
age of nineteen, beautiful piano protege Norma Herr had been
the most vibrant personality in the room. She loved her
daughters and did her best to raise them well, but as her
mental state deteriorated, Norma spoke less about Chopin and
more about Nazis and her fear that her daughters would be
kidnapped, murdered, or raped. When the girls left for college, the harassment
escalated—Norma called them obsessively, appeared at their
apartments or jobs, threatened to kill herself if they did
not return home. After a traumatic encounter, Mira and her
sister were left with no choice but to change their names
and sever all contact with Norma in order to stay safe. But
while Mira pursued her career as an artist—exploring the
ancient romance of Florence, the eerie mysticism of northern
Norway, and the raw desert of Israel—the haunting memories
of her mother were never far away. Then one day, Mira’s life changed forever after a
debilitating car accident. As she struggled to recover from
a traumatic brain injury, she was confronted with a need to
re-contextualize her life—she had to relearn how to paint,
read, and interact with the outside world. In her search for
a way back to her lost self, Mira reached out to the
homeless shelter where she believed her mother was living
and discovered that Norma was dying. Mira and her sister traveled to Cleveland, where they shared
an extraordinary reconciliation with their mother that none
of them had thought possible. At the hospital, Mira
discovered a set of keys that opened a storage unit Norma
had been keeping for seventeen years. Filled with family
photos, childhood toys, and ephemera from Norma’s life, the
storage unit brought back a flood of previous memories that
Mira had thought were lost to her forever. The Memory Palace is a breathtaking literary memoir about
the complex meaning of love, truth, and the capacity for
forgiveness among family. Through stunning prose and
original art created by the author in tandem with the text,
The Memory Palace explores the connections between mother
and daughter that cannot be broken no matter how much
exists—or is lost—between them.
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