This book surprised me with both its tragedy and its grace. After a complete mental collapse, Barbara painstakingly rebuilds her reality. Every word of the text is palpable from the darkness fo the descent to the conversations with her psychiatrist. An illuminating manuscript.

Barbara is musical, well educated, a good friend. What leaves her cowering in the corner of an elevator? Drawing from the power of friendship, music, art, the Psalms, and the poetry of Paul Celan, we watch as Barbara saves herself and slowly finds a way to a new world of faith and love. The Memory Room explores her willingness to mine painful memories in order to construct a new life. The sentences in this novel, each its own masterpiece, manage, when strung together, to connect the dots of human cruelty and salvation. It is a portrait of lost innocence, and one woman’s choice to see beauty in the world even as she faces the darkest side of her own human nature.

Imprint: Shoemaker & Hoard
Distributor: Perseus Distribution
Publication Date: 08-31-2004
Pages: 520
Measurements: 8.25in X 5.50in X 1.30lb