The Memory Room

The first time I read this book, I was struck by her suffering, I could not bear to read it all. With about a fourth of the book left, I skipped to the end and read it backwards. Glad for an ending that seemed hopeful. This time I read the book normally, knowing what would happen and not as worried for an end I couldn't read.The poetry in this book traces out a past that almost feels like it could be mine. Yours. Any readers. I read a review of this book where the reader complained that memory does not work this way. That the story is ridiculous for it's portrayal of repressed memories. I don't know the truth of that, and I don't care to. This book is not about repressed memories as much as it is about confronting our fears. Reaching deep inside of ourselves, through all sorts of darkness, to find whatever hope and love and beauty that we can.This book is beautiful. It is entirely characterized by this quotation: "A conspiracy of language gently bending my perception in a more hopeful arc." I found hope in this book. It reminded me to focus on the things that I love rather than the things that I fear. The first time I read it, I needed that reminder very badly. Today, I'm just glad to once again realize that there is a great deal of beauty in the world.

Most novels are content to follow a basic pattern of beginning, middle, end. Occasionally, very occasionally, a novel will come along that redefines the form. Mary Rakow's "The Memory Room" is a striking example. Yes, there is a plot, there is a back story, but these things, effective as they are, matter less than Rakow's pure inventiveness with language, thought, image - all the tools at our command with which we communicate. This book takes the kind of risks that reward readers who care about writing. The story transcends its particulars to express a universal desire in us all: the desire to be recognized, to recognize ourselves, and become more whole. If that sounds ponderous, don't be mistaken. This is, as the phrase goes, a good read.

I am a graduate student of creative writing and I am now in debt to Rakow and to my professor, who recommended this novel. Rakow's artistry has deeply invigorated my own writing and raised the trajectory of my development, as few other works have.

I really don't know where to begin in praising this book -- it's simply one of the most moving, insightful, and intelligently constructed works I've ever had the pleasure to read. The author has utilized multiple foundations and techniques -- the poetry of Paul Celan, the Psalms, the structure of the Mass, as well as her own luminous prose and poetry -- to convey the story of her narrator in such a way as to place it inside the hearts and souls of her readers. Combining all of these elements is risky -- but Mary Rakow has pulled it off with incredible skill, leaving us with a work that is both riveting and revelatory, compelling in the deepest way.Despite the title, THE MEMORY ROOM is more about coming to grips with pain -- in one's life and in the world at large -- and putting it in its place alongside the things that are beautiful in this life. There are many images in the novel of this dichotomy -- Barbara, the narrator, keeps a self-bound scrapbook of them to remind her. One of the most poignant is a clipping she has saved showing a photograph of a cellist playing in the street in Sarajevo (from p.32): 'Every afternoon at four o'clock, in full concert dress, mortar and machine-gun fire, his folded chair, silk tails falling to the dusty road. A requiem for the dead.' In the picture, to the left, sits a woman, watching the cellist, holding a baby that she doesn't even realize is dead, the shock and horror of her existence having numbed her to such an extent that she is unaware. In this scene, as in the world, beauty and horror exist side by side.Barbara remembers horrific details -- more focused as the story progresses -- of unbelievably cruel abuse at the hands of both her father and her mother. Her older sister and her younger brother suffered as well. Through the course of the book, we see her grapple with this pain, with the meaning that it has in relation to her life. She is lucky to find a gentle, caring therapist -- one who appears to be in no way manipulative or controlling -- who provides the safe atmosphere which is necessary for her to conduct her healing. Make no mistake about it -- that healing is something that each survivor must do for themselves. There is no magic wand. Barbara expresses time and again that she knows her healing must come from within.There are many frustrations that she experiences along this road. Her faith -- she has converted to Catholicism as an adult -- which was once her foundation, has been found by her to be cracked. She has more of a problem with the Church than with God -- on p.288, she says to a priest, a friend: "If the Church fails to address pain, then it is useless to me."Barbara states a truth that many hold, that children intuitively know when they are being abused or mistreated, that their greatest defense mechanism, their subconscious, puts up a wall to protect them, so that they can return and deal with a pain they cannot understand later in life, when they have the tools and

Mary Rakow alters my mind as few recent writers have done. I am caught in her epic pilgrimage through the nonlinear stations of her protagonist Barbara's psychic crucifixion, and haunted by her ability to ultimately create such a profound whole from so many shards of stained glass. Her journey back to meaning from the state of utter collapse with which the novel begins is heroic from psychological and spiritual perspectives alike.The story she tells, punctuated with the poetry of Paul Celan and the high art of communicating via white space on the page, transcends its manifest content: a woman's personal holocaust and its aftermath. Rakow presents more than words; she deals in moments, in breaths, in the spaces between unconscious experience and conscious recognition. Hers is the search for the unthought known.She has given us more than a book; it is an epiphany.