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I found this a harrowing read. I find the description of it as a "tender" tale of unconditional love a bit misleading. This is a story replete with abuse and neglect, I am not the first usually to blame parents but the narcissism and selfishness of these two seemed limitless. Their children suffered from severe burns, starvation, various sexual assaults, severe bullying, extreme cold and conditions that were beyond unhygienic while both parents found various ways to emotionally torture, sponge off and exploit their children but gee, at least they were always proud of them.

I kept having to put the book down in tears. I was really angry at the alcoholic father (there might be reasons I found those scenes triggering, although my experiences were not quite on the same level). I thought it was both interesting and well done that the book hinted at trauma in the father's past that had turned him into what he was (but his behaviour toward his wife and children were nevertheless indefensible). It was both honest and good writing not to resolve those hints with anything tangible.

The author had every right to write this memoir and probably needed to do it. Nevertheless it is painful to experience with her as she delves back into awful suffering (and some joy, but usually tempered by something going terribly wrong) in short, well crafted episodes. I found it surprising and unsatisfactory that the book having built all this pain and suffering then resolved it all at the end with a neat family gathering where they all love and accept each other as they are (although I must admit there are hints here that not everyone is so happy and also Maureen is still absent and we do not know how she is going). I resent the suggestion that Jeanette's (mountain goat's) huge success has somehow come out of the suffering as a product of it, similarly with her younger brother.

Perhaps Walls figured she had to try to put a happy, loving resolution on all the pain either for herself or misguidedly for the reader. I railed against it though.

This is a worthwhile book to try to understand, although readers who are easily upset be wary. The reviewers on the back praise it for not containing any self-pity. I found the determined cheerfulness unrelatable and needless but each to their own. The quality of the writing was very high.