(Re)Making Love: A Memoir by @maryltabor
Review and recommendation by t
I must admit it was a challenge to write the featured recommendation for Mary's memoir. There's something immensely moving and educational about good mixed genre pieces: the unclassifiable, the visionary, the sentimental, the wise. I don't feel at all in a capacity to review this with the voice of an equal, and so have chosen to write more personally - which I believe might be most appropriate, since (Re)Making Love is, at face value, personal. But most of all, to talk about her work here is like trying to talk about all of life and to attempt to put a single finger down on it. It's not possible, and my attempt here on this page will certainly fall short.
Without a doubt, Mary is an incredibly experienced writer with a gifted literary voice of confidence and conviction, that transcends time and space with its calm matter-of-fact eloquence, intelligence and elegance and in places, wit and satirical undertones. Literary voices are important but a reader can easily understand and appreciate her writing style - that is not the only gem of her memoir. Her versatility and literary adeptness spans form and function. Very quickly, you enviously realize that this piece is not only a memoir, or a narrative, but an intricately woven collection of essays, quotes, poetry, notes, classical music, pop culture references, quick insight, commentary, philosophy and more. Memory and thought, the past and the present interplay and trade places, meshing together into an experience that covers an overwhelming and astonishing vastness.
But unlike some convention-breaking, form-meshing writers, the ideas, insertions and references to me were not fragmentary, nor left too much enigmatic room for interpretation; they flow smoothly from one place to the next. The writer's consciousness is one that is authoritative and utterly possessing - it commands respect and reverence - but it also guides the reader onwards, gently, seductively, through a journey. The words seep through into the subconscious and become intuition and instinct, becoming a part of the reader. It is as much the reader's journey as is Mary's own personal reflection (or that of Mary's narrative/writing persona).
Indeed, the content is at times heart-breaking and gripping, highly charged with emotion and sentiment, at times calm and full of an unpretentious, genuine wisdom, and at all times, extremely intelligent and cultured. Reading the memoir, was truly an educational experience; she teaches on life, on literature, on love, and demonstrates an example of great strength and character through it all. It reminds me of reading Walt Whitman - encompassing immense implications on life and the cosmos but also remaining intimate and the confiding words of a close friend.
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