Review of "Unpacking the Attic" by Ann Mracek

​Score: 96/100 (9.6 out of 10)

Unpacking the Attic by Ann Mracek is a VERY special book!

It's a memoir like no other.

Memoirs usually follow an author's experiences in a linear, chronological manner. Unpacking the Attic, in contrast, is a beautifully fragmented, vignette-like collection of the author's memories, many of which are linked to items the author literally finds in her elderly parents' home.

99.9% of the time, we can't stand fragmented, vignette-like literature. Those types of books tend to come off as self-indulgent, style-over-substance affairs. They tend to be chaotic and hard to follow. In contrast, Mracek's memoir almost seems more episodic, like chapters in a storied life filled with powerful, touching, and inspirational memories.

It's a lot more artsy, dare we say... musical. This book is almost like a collection of musical notes in a brilliant composition.

Unpacking the Attic is a book about reflections and memories as the author's elderly parents tradition into a nursing home, leaving their house behind—a house full of sentimental items and tons of precious memories.

As an aside: this was especially touching for us. You may have noticed, but we recently moved from a location we were at for 10+ years. We had to go through a lot of our old storage boxes, bags, and shelves, deciding what to throw away and what to keep. Thousands of decisions, sometimes difficult ones. Every item has meaning. Every piece of paper has meaning.

That feeling is truly captured in this book.

For example, the book opens with a tidal wave of memories triggered by sorting “sticker-dot” piles for a whole house move: green for the parents’ new apartment, blue for the daughter, orange for the author, until even a thermos or a box of Epsom salts becomes a portal back in time and a kind of healing elixir.

The author discovers her father's old plush monkey, which practically disintegrates in her hands when she takes it out of the box. You can really feel the tragedy of that.

From the porch swing, she watches movers carry out doll furniture and a tiny table (Teddy in the second chair), and the project to “empty the attic” quietly becomes the project to unpack a life.

In “For the Birds- Little Spirits With Wings,” Billy the parakeet rattles his always-open cage door and squeaks, “Help! Let me out!” The metaphor snaps into place: sometimes the door to freedom was open all along. Then there’s the hysterical “pork roast” fiasco (Billy hip-deep in cooling gravy, smelling like a pork chop for weeks), which doubles as a gentle lesson about unlikely friendships (parakeet plus collies) and staying open to joy.

In “The Wren House- Finding New Purpose,” the author and her dad build sea-foam-green birdhouses and tinker at a dusty workbench, then distills it into three life rules: “Be capable. Be self-reliant. Be adaptable.” It’s practical, tender, and immediately usable.

The book’s emotional peak is “The Crash- A Lifetime of Pain.” A rear-end collision in 1972 (pre-headrests) breaks her neck; surgeons talk rods and a halo brace. She fights through with a soft collar, daily chiropractic care, and sheer grit, losing perfect pitch and long piano sessions, but eventually crafting a dancer’s life instead. The chapter is honest without self-pity; it’s resilience, scored for strings.

“Trees- Rooted in My Heart” links remembrance to legacy, like Egyptians carving names in stone, then anchors it in the lopsided dogwood that survived hail and history. It’s memoir as living monument.

And the small, luminous pieces keep coming: a sewing-needle holder her father hand-crafted from stacked rings of wood, a Czech heirloom-inspired act of love; a rescued turtle, soaked in warm Epsom-salt baths until it “almost won” the school race, each artifact becoming a lesson in patience, repair, and choosing hope.

That’s why this fragmented form works here when it often doesn’t elsewhere: every vignette is anchored to something tangible and purposeful, and every object hands you a takeaway you can use tomorrow.

And not every single item is directly linked to a specific memory. In fact, there's a pair of slippers that Ann finds which she can't figure out where they came from or what they were for. However, this does kinda lead into her discussion about her dancing career, which is arguably the best part of the book.

Ann Mracek, along with being a renown profession musician was also a phenomenal dancer, and that's despite the fact that she was born with flat feet and was told by her dance teacher that she'd never be a dancer because of her flat feet. How inspiring is that?

Speaking of inspiring, one of our favorite stories in the whole book--which runs adjacent to this dancing memory--is when Ann talks about the turtle that her father rescued. The turtle had been run over and left for dead by some driver. It was actually being eaten alive by maggots when they found him. However, their father removed the maggots with salt and gave the turtle a chance to recover at their home. Ironically, the school mascot for Ann's school was a turtle. Even more ironically, it turns out that her school held a special turtle race every year involving diffferent turtles that the students collected. Well, Ann's turtle almost won the race despite almost dying (being "resurrected') and only lost because he got disoriented and went the wrong way at the last moment. You really get the sense that this turtle memory inspired Ann to overcome all the obstacles that stood in the way of her dancing.

Another special memory that stood out was about when Ann cut her hair after having super long hair most of her life. She describes the challenge of having long hair through her many performances, often back-to-back. She describes often having to clean and care for it for two hours! But then she cuts it, and it evokes a powerful memory with her father who cries when he sees her shorter hair. He had called her his "Troll doll" because of the Troll dolls that had hair longer than their bodies. Hey, we had a few of those!

You may have noticed that many of these objects and the memories they evoke also provide some sort of lesson or takeaway.

Something we really, really loved about were the quotes. Similar to Deion Sanders's book, this book is filled to the brim with great quotes! Here are some of our favorites:

“The thing the garden needs most are the footsteps of the gardener.”

“When someone shows up on your porch with a box of snakes, don’t sign for it!"

“All lives have pivotal moments. Angry, hateful words sling like arrows from the very people we look to for compassion. But it is up to us where those arrows land.”

“Sometimes we imagine we are trapped when the door was open all along!”

“There is a path for healing your inner child. Walk down it with me.”

“Hurt people, hurt people. Healed people, heal people.”

“We cannot grow roots without fertile soil. What lies below the surface dictates our destiny.”

“Sometimes we need to do a little digging to get to the truth.”

“Is nostalgia truly a longing for the way things were, or for how we wished they were?”

“We need to reconnect to the truth that simply being together is joy enough.”

“I can learn how to do it. Other people do this, and I’m just as smart as they are.”

“Don’t plan the meal until you pull the carrot.”

“Learn to enjoy those successes and goals met in the present moment. Celebrate, or you will forever be chasing after the next award.”

This book is beautiful and has a lot to offer.

Check it out on Amazon!