Joanna Howard

4.5 rounded up. This is a physically very small book with a cover design that made me think I was going to get something light and perhaps humorous. But I too am 'a woman of a certain age' and in this short memoir Howard artfully captures both the era and an affecting family story. For this reader, Gen X nostalgia is surely part of the magic but it's the lovely prose and non-annoying child narrator that made it work.

I love the way the *stories* in this book are like strange paintings coming to life. Characters recede, emerge from death and back in, into life, into atmosphere, cloth and fabric, and other things too.