THE MEMORY PALACE, New York Times Bestseller, Washington Post Best Book of 2011 and 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography.
While you can buy my book on Amazon, but wouldn't you rather support your local independent bookstore and be a local hero? Click HERE to find my book at an independent bookstore near you.
LISTEN to my NPR interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
Watch the book trailer HERE.
“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 Bartok
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
“Mira Bartok’s harrowing and beautiful
tale of growing up with her paranoid schizophrenic mother is in some ways a
memoir about memory itself. For Bartok—suffering from a brain injury and raised
by someone who had tenuous contact with the external world—the question “what
really happened” takes on a particular urgency. She answers it with painstaking
honesty, weaving deft parallels between domestic and institutional abuse,
individual and national trauma. And as she recalls the shattering experiences
of her childhood, literally illuminating them with her haunting mnemonic
paintings, something that was never intact is made resonantly whole again.”
–Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
“A book of aching beauty
and compassion, that circles around the essence of what it is to be alive.”—Nick Flynn, author of Another
Bullshit Night in Suck City
“The story of Mira
Bartok’s tormented relationship with her mother initially recalls Jeannette
Walls’s The Glass Castle in
its riveting depiction of unconventional families. But in lyrically
elegant prose, Bartok’s THE MEMORY PALACE (Free Press) explores not just
relationships but the slippery nature of memory itself…a heartbreaking expression
of devotion to a mother she loved but had to abandon in order to survive.” –O
Magazine
“Bartok
juggles a handful of profound themes: how to undertake a creative life…how we
remember…how one says goodbye to a loved one in a manner that might redeem in
some small way a life and a relationship blighted by psychosis; and, most
vividly and harrowingly, how our society and institutions throw mental illness
back in the hands of family members, who are frequently helpless to deal with
the magnitude of the terrifying problems it generates. On all counts, it’s an engrossing
read.” –Elle Magazine
“This moving, compassionately candid memoir by artist and
children’s book author Bartok describes a life dominated by her gifted but
schizophrenic mother…Bartok turns these strangely parallel narratives and
overlapping wonders into a haunting, almost patchwork, narrative that lyrically
chronicles a complex mother-daughter relationship.
–Publishers Weekly, starred review
“A disturbing, mesmerizing personal narrative about growing up
with a brilliant but schizophrenic mother...Richly textured, compassionate and
heartbreaking.”
–Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Poignant, powerful, disturbing, and
exceedingly well-written, this is an unforgettable memoir.” –Booklist, starred review
“All you’d need is to
see my copy to know—I have Post-It notes marking phrases and sentences I wanted
to repeat because they were so good. About one-third of the way through, I
thought that if this book were a person, I’d consider making out with it.” —Library
Journal Book Smack!, starred review
“Mira Bartok’s Memory
Palace is a beautifully crafted
tale of life with an absent father and a mentally ill mother. As the story
unfolds, you’ll see how fine the line is between gentle artistic creativity and
debilitating madness. With each new vignette, Mira reveals the wonder and the
horror of life in a house ruled by insanity. As the daughters get older, the
mother devolves, making her way from world-class musician to paranoid homeless
schizophrenic. Despite that tragedy, Mira’s spirit never fails to shine
through. You’ll wish you could pick her up, like a little lost kitten, but in
the end, she makes it on her own.” –John Elder Robison, author of Look Me
in the Eye
“The Memory Palace is a stunning meditation on the tenacity
of familial bonds, even in the face of extreme adversity, and an artist's
struggle to claim her own creative life. Bartok carries us,
room to luminous room, through her memory palace, filling it with stories that
link loss to grace, guilt to love, the natural world's great beauty to the
creative act, and tragic beginnings to quietly triumphant
closings. This extraordinary book, with its beautiful illuminated images,
will stay with me.”
–Meredith Hall, author
of Without A Map
“Among
the plethora of books now available by the children of parents with
schizophrenia, The Memory Palace stands out. Elegantly written, the book details what it
is like to grow up with a mother with schizophrenia and sensitively assesses
the long-term effects her mother’s illness had on both her and her sister.
Strongly recommended.” –E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., author
of The Insanity Offense
