Will I love The Part That Burns?

The Part That Burns is not a linear narrative but a memoir in fragments. Each essay or chapter is different, interesting, engaging like scattered pieces of a puzzle that the writer—and reader—are trying to put together.

It's about a childhood wrought with abuse and rejection, about trauma and epigenetics, home and roots. It's about a girl who grows up to become a teenager who becomes a young woman who becomes a wife and a mother and every step of the way, she yearns for what we all yearn for: acceptance and love.

My memoir is as slim and sparse as… show more.

Once again, I felt I’d found an author who read my diary. In this odyssey through memory, Jeannine Oullette recalls the painful past and the many ways in which trauma shaped her life. As I savored each vignette, I found myself also reading with urgency, eager to find the deeper meaning. It is thought-provoking and emotionally layered. Not a linear story, The Part That Burns deftly describes Ouellette’s life as a victim of sexual abuse and neglect, but never leaves the reader with a heaviness too great to bear. For me, this book was not so much a story as… show more.