The way we grow up sets our definitions of what “normal” is. Childhood prepares us for the way we interpret and react to the world around us: with fear, with enthusiasm, with curiosity, with anger, etc. In Love is a Burning Thing, Nina St. Pierre takes us into a childhood where constant motion was normal, with a mother who saw plots and divinity everywhere, when a young girl had to be the parent as often as not. St. Pierre’s long look back is full of questions about mental illness, faith, responsibility, and (maybe) forgiveness.
We know from early in this memoir that St. Pierre’s mother was prone to mental illness. While in college in 1971, Anita set herself on fire at the urgings of a friend. News reports said later that the only thing Anita and her friend said in the hospital was, “It’s lovely to die together.” The friend died. Anita lived, but most of her body was covered in burns. She wore long sleeves, turtlenecks, and other cover-ups for the rest of her life. By the time St. Pierre and her brother, Chris, were born, Anita had learned to seek solace in Transcendental Meditation, the Catholic saints, long road trips, the stars, Mount Shasta, and scraps of many other faiths and practices.
St. Pierre grew up with her mother, though she spent summers with her father and his second wife. The small family crisscrossed California. They took to the road to travel to San Francisco, San Diego, and the small towns around Mount Shasta in the heavily wooded northern part of the state. They lived in tiny apartments, sometimes motel rooms, for the most part. This was normal for St. Pierre, though she often longed for stability, to put down roots somewhere. Her adult reflections reveal that St. Pierre only rarely felt the kind of ecstatic joy or solace that her mother did. St. Pierre was more concerned with making sure bills were paid and that they had a roof over her head. It’s little wonder that, as a teenager, St. Pierre struggled with anger and alcohol.
I found it really hard not to armchair diagnose Anita and found it interesting that St. Pierre, as an adult, doesn’t try to find a psychiatric explanation for her mother’s behavior and paranoia. Instead, St. Pierre dives into the history of New Religious Movements and the ways that people seek out new traditions to find enlightenment, with little (if any) knowledge of that tradition’s language, culture, history, and context. She comments that these seekers may be trying to find a magic bullet to solve all of their problems, rather than dive into the painful and less glamorous work of reducing poverty, feeding the hungry, discouraging racism, or creating lasting justice. If they just pray a little harder, meditate a little longer, or do something a little more, they can transcend the earthly and find a peaceful divine. All of this seeking, however, can make it hard to provide for two children on a shoestring budget. All of this seeking—and constant flight—also showed me that Anita was someone who would never find what she was looking for.
Love is a Burning Thing is a fascinating memoir. I deeply appreciated St. Pierre’s intelligence and vulnerability. Readers who grew up with or know troubled seekers will find a lot to like here.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.