Subtitled “A Daughter’s Memoir” this is an account which needed to be shared by ex US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winning Natasha Trethewey. In 1985, when Natasha was nineteen her mother, Gwen Grimmette, was murdered by her ex-husband after ten years of domestic abuse and a period of extremely chilling stalking and threats.
This is Natasha’s attempts to both celebrate her mother and come to terms with her demise. Towards the end she states: “The whole time I have been working to tell this story, I have done so incrementally, parsing it so that I could bear it; neat, compartmentalized segments that have allowed me to carry on these three decades without falling apart.” This is also the approach she takes in her writing of it, a not totally chronological account which moves from dreams to observations to moments of their lives but at the backbone there is a story of a girl brought up in Mississippi, a mixed race child, loved by her mother’s family with whom she lives amongst with her white Canadian University Professor father gradually drifting away from her.
In the early 1970’s Mum makes a break from the supportive family and moves to Atlanta where she meets the wrong guy. Part of the account is a physical revisiting thirty years after the event, there’s a fascinating visit to a medium and a chance encounter which leads Trethewey to possessing the case notes.
Throughout the work there is the inevitable build-up to the murder, brought home shockingly for the reader through complete transcriptions of telephone calls. The police were monitoring the situation aware of the step-father’s threats but acted too slowly to save her mum.
The sense of loss and ongoing pain is evident throughout and any real sense of celebration of her mother’s life is dampened by her eventual fate. There’s an extraordinary calmness which both distances the reader from the events and drives them on through the text. It is a hauntingly tragic read but it is ultimately inspiring in the author’s quest to move on some way from this inexplicable crime.
Memorial Drive was published in July 2020. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the review copy.
