By Lauren Bell
Content warning: addiction, alcohol abuse, suicide
The Burden of Memories by Janet Calcaterra is a novel about family, and how mental illness can affect all of its members. The year is 1995, and the novel opens with eldest daughter, Adrienne Muir, in the middle of a bender after losing her dream job. Her slightly intrusive and WASP-y mother, Gloria, becomes worried quickly, and urges her to spend a week with her younger sister, Cass, in North Bay, Ontario. At the same time, Adrienne receives a box of letters from her aunt, written by her deceased father during his time overseas in World War II. Her curiosity overrides her emotions—especially with her mother being so tight-lipped about their past—and she brings the box with her to Cass’s. Their father, Dr. Alex Muir, was a psychiatrist, and as they read his letters, they struggle to decode the cryptic messaging in his letters. Is he speaking of his own mental turmoil or his patients’?
The Burden of Memories is told through the multiple perspectives of the Muir family, the letters written by Dr. Alex Muir, and his diary entries; thus, it bounces from 1940 to 1995 with each passage. I generally don’t have any issues with this format; however, I found that some of the letters, when alluded to in the text, were repeated unnecessarily. I believe that there were missed opportunities for imagery in the text, and felt that Calcaterra was telling the story, rather than showing it. I also found that there were a lot of missed opportunities for introspection among the characters, especially since the novel was about examining memories and the choices that arose from them.
What I did notice about the novel and appreciate was the non-nuclear family structures, meaning there weren’t any “traditional” households in the text; all were multigenerational and most included half/step-siblings/parents. It was nice to see that diversity. I also appreciate the awareness that Calcaterra promotes by describing and openly discussing the signs of alcohol abuse through her characters, and I hope that readers can learn and benefit from those observations. While The Burden of Memories was not my favourite read, it was a quick one (less than two hundred pages) and would be suited readers who enjoy World War II fiction and Canadian history, as well as books set locally in Ontario.
Thank you to Latitude 46 for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.