Human Heartbeat Detected by Chelsey Clammer

Book review by Anna Cavouras

Reading Human Heartbeat Detected is a heart-wrenching journey of struggle told with unflinching honesty. The essays in this collection weave together stories of the complexity of existence using beautiful lines that will pull your soul out of your body. I read the book in its entirety over a few days. Then I put it down and walked away. I wasn’t sure where to start with this review. But the stories, like all memoirs seem to, reverberated throughout my life. In a way, it was haunting.

Simply put Chelsea Clammer takes us into her life, laying it out on the ground, unfiltered and unapologetic. The use of lists, charts, dictionary definitions, text chains, and dialogue fill in these moments in her life in a brilliantly engaging way. The essays are wide-reaching in scope, yet intimate in detail, traveling the themes of trauma, abuse, grief, and survival. The resilience of humanity is undeniably present, emerging throughout the collection like a blade of grass through a cracked sidewalk.

One of my favorite techniques that sets this essay collection apart is the commentary on social issues in American society.

“It’s a world that has put these young people in the grasp of dangerous hands and the violence of silence.” (57). In this essay “The Effects of Silence,” Clammer tells a tragic and horrific story of the sexual abuse of her ex-husband and his sisters. Weaving in the financial and human cost of how various systems do not believe and do not support victims, this essay cracks open the dark corners of systemic failures.

“Which is another way of saying that, at thirty-four years old, my husband almost became a widower because I don’t have access to dental care.” (63).

In “Which is Another Way of Saying Decay” explores the harmful reality of lack of dental insurance and access for Americans. Clammer’s own experience with an oral infection is intertwined with the sobering statistics of people dying or facing catastrophic health issues due to lack of dental care.

The book is filled with truths like these, making it at times hard to read, but impossible to ignore.

At the collection’s core, the essays follow the author’s mental health journey, the rise and fall of her marriage, and how emerges from the other side of it all. One of the things I loved the most was the unexpected layering of stories – a story about an abscessed tooth also had references to crumbling public infrastructure, another story about her husband’s schizophrenia includes the construction of a small robot – meaning that every essay had a depth beyond the author’s experience, submerging the reader into surprising corners of life. As a reader and a writer, there’s nothing I value more than hearing a story I haven’t heard before, told in a way I hadn’t imagined. This collection promises that, even though it might break your heart along the way.

Anna Cavouras finds stories everywhere. Some of her work has appeared in Studio Magazine, Boneyard Soup, and with the League of Canadian Poets. She is a former writer-in-residence with Firefly Creative Writing. Currently, she is a judge with Reedsy Prompts and an editorial assistant with Minerva Rising Press. She always carries her feminist agenda.