McCarthy combined long, sensual sentences with her strong, journalistic voice in this memoir. ( )

Haven't read this for a while, so I'm not going to summarize, just give an impression. The author lost her parents in the 1918 flu epidemic. What happens after their deaths is the essence of these stories, each of which comes with an introduction by the author telling us what is made up, what is possibly remembered incorrectly, and what almost certainly must be true. With that out of the way, the reader can sit back and enjoy. I recall these stories as being both funny and heartbreaking, and some of best writing of the period. ( )