Title: The Weight of Silence
Author: Catherine Therese
Published: Hatchette Jan 2009
Sypnosis: The Weight of Silence is the gravity of all the unsaids, the unseens, and how they shape our lives. A father’s drinking, a mother’s shame, a daughter’s longing to hold on to a trouser leg to hear someone speak of what never happened. The Weight of Silence = 9 lbs 4 ozs. In her achingly funny, heartbreaking childhood memoir, Catherine Therese takes the reader inside her head, and upside down on a unique emotional rollercoaster from picking her belly button in her backyard in Blacktown, pulling her hair out standing on her head, to the stage; hiding inside her wardrobe interpreting silence, to the bedroom of a boy with half a thumb and to the labour ward, in an unforgettable story of remembering, forgetting, pretending, of becoming who you are
Status: Read on January 18, 2011
My Thoughts:
Some memoirs tell a story but others, like this one, feel like the person is speaking to themselves. While I admire the author’s candour, I was expecting something less introspective and painful and more anecdotal and amusing by the blurb. I found myself cringing in sympathy and uncomfortable with the rawness of her recollections at times. Even with my familiarity with the places of her childhood, having grown up a few suburbs away, I found it difficult to connect to Catherine’s experiences. It was difficult to make sense of some of the people and situations at times with shifts between her childhood and adult viewpoint and periods of narrative that are simply a stream of conciousness. I can’t help but think that the manuscript should have been handed to a therapist rather than a publisher.
Book’d Out 
Sucha a pity the book wasn’t what you expected. I also have a review today of a book that I didn’t like so much.
I thought you were reviewing The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf but soon realized it was a different book.
LikeLike