“The Memory Palace is almost a fairy tale: two little girls grow up under the spell of their mother’s madness. But it really did happen, once upon a time, and Mira Bartók uses her considerable powers of recollection and compassion to understand her family and to present them to readers as complete, loved human beings.
This is an extraordinary book.”
-Audrey Niffenegger, author of "The Time Traveler’s Wife" and "Her Fearful Symmetry"
“Even now, when the phone rings late at night, I think it’s her. I stumble out of bed ready for the worst. The last time my mother called was in 1990. I was thirty-one and living in Chicago. She said if I didn’t come home right away she’d kill herself.”
So opens Mira Bartók’s stunning and powerful literary memoir "The Memory Palace" (Free Press; January 11, 2011). In the footsteps of "The Glass Castle" and "The Liars’ Club", Mira chronicles her life with her brilliant but mentally ill mother Norma, and explores their volatile relationship and ultimately unbreakable bond with astonishing and unforgettable lyrical power.
A piano prodigy in her youth, Norma’s severe case of schizophrenia created a hellish upbringing for Mira and her sister. When they were young, Norma neglected the girls, and Mira and her sister were forced to make do on their own. As the girls entered their teenage years, Norma’s illness grew progressively severe – she tried to be a loving mother, but her illness made it impossible. At times, she wouldn’t let the girls go to school because she was afraid they would leave her, and she entered their room at night filled with frightening stories about people stalking them and wanting them dead. When they left for college, Norma would call Mira and her sister dozens of times a day, appear unannounced at their jobs and apartments, and threaten them if they suggested that she get treatment for her illness.
Finally, after Norma attacked her daughters when they insisted she get help, Mira and her sister decided that, in order to stay safe, they had to change their names and cut off all communication with her. For the next seventeen years, Mira’s only contact with her mother was through letters exchanged through a post office box that she set up so that Norma wouldn’t be able to find her.
During that time she spent away from her mother, Mira travelled the world and continued her career as an artist. But when she was 40, a debilitating car accident left her with a terrible brain injury. She could retrain herself to draw and write, but struggled to regain some of her memories. In an effort to reconnect to her past, Mira reached out to the shelter where she thought her mother was living and received word that Norma was dying at a hospital in Cleveland. Mira and her sister traveled to see their mother and to reconcile with her. In the hospital, Mira found Norma’s set of keys in a dirty sock in her backpack. Norma told her that one of the keys was to a storage unit where she kept all of her belongings – the sisters went to the unit and discovered hundreds of diaries, photographs, and mementos from their past that Mira never thought she would see again. They triggered a flood of memories and gave Mira access to the past that she believed had been lost forever and inspired her to paint a memory palace, based on a mnemonic practice from the Renaissance used to create a visual map in one’s mind in order to recall people and events.
Mira’s original paintings of her memory palace appear throughout the book, as do passages from her mother’s letters and journal entries. Norma’s writing became more and more desperate as the years went by, and readers will be riveted as they become spectators to her descent deeper into madness. But Mira’s beautiful prose and her incredible resilience through everything that life throws at her makes her story impossible to put down. At turns heartbreaking and uplifting, "The Memory Palace" is an unforgettable memoir that forces you to reflect on your own relationships with loved ones and consider the importance of family and love and forgiveness.
About the Author
Mira Bartók is an artist and writer living in Massachusetts. She has received awards from such organizations as the Fulbright-Hayes Foundation, the Associated Writing Programs, the Illinois Arts Council, Pollock-Krasner Grant, and the Carnegie Fund for Writers. Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been noted in The Best American Essays 1999 and other anthologies. Mira also runs an online resource for artists – miraslist.blogspot.com.
For more information on Mira and the book, please visit her website at: www.thememorypalace.com
