“Tesserae: A Memoir of Two Summers stands above much of the crowd in its commitment to ask, ‘What is it to remember?’ Mathias B. Freese, tenderly plaiting a web that spreads from Woodstock, Las Vegas, Long Island, and North Carolina, locates friends and family, lovers long since gone, desire and passion sometimes quenched sometimes unrequited, and the harrowing agony that comes from that most soul-crushing word of all, regret.
But Tesserae is not a work of sadness and grief. Rather, it is an effort from a trained psychotherapist adept at understanding the feelings that we all have. The quiescence found has a staying effect upon the mind; this memoir lingers in the reader’s memory for some time.” — Steven Berndt, Professor of American Literature, College of Southern Nevada
Reviews
“Freese is definitely a damaged soul, a self-described guilt-wracked curmudgeon nearing the end of his unaccomplished life. I, however, found him to be a most interesting character, a good writer, and highly intelligent with insightful perspectives. He is very hard on himself, which made me sad, and I hope he finds peace as well as the love he craves—he is not an unloveable man, and his writing is intimate and confessional, drawing the reader in as a friend. I found many bits of wisdom to chew on and remember. “Maybe I write because it is in the word that we find our worth,” he says. He has many worthwhile words.”
– Linda Austin
“The collection is part-memoir part-adventure-novel. By using his experiences on those two summers in particular, and interspersing the narrative with the past of the past and the future of the past, Freese has created a marvellous book. The thing that will stay with me, is how very intimate the book is. It is a deep-dive into the author’s innermost fears, dreams, insecurities. He talks of his first love, his wife, a failed marriage, and his intense but brief relationship with his daughter. He talks of these events as if talking to a friend, and it took a lot of stepping back on my part to not feel upset and embroiled in it all.”
– Udita
“The title of this luminous book – TESSERAE – is defined as a name given to pieces used in a mosaic. The flavor of the entire book is suggested in Matt’s opening Introduction: ‘I sorely miss the sixties. I miss them because they are still within me; missing them is akin to loss. Woodstock became a cemetery for me in the early to mid-seventies, a place I needed to come to in order to be reminded of the feelings, relationships, and human interactions I had experienced. It was a devotional feeling, like lighting a memorial candle for a dearly departed loved one. What is it to have memory in this organic memory box that we own? What is memory’s purpose?’”
– Grady Harp
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