I like the content of this book but I think I just prefer fiction over memoirs. The matter of fact tone of this book just did not invite much interest for me, but Gornick is clearly very intelligent and I would like to read some of her fiction.

Mama had assumed her widowhood in the same way. It elevated her in her own eyes, made of her a spiritually significant person, lent richness to her gloom and rhetoric to her speech. Papa's death became a religion that provided ceremony and doctrine. A woman-who-has-lost-the-love-of-her-life was now her orthodoxy: she paid it Talmudic attention.