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Helen Rebanks captures significant moments of her life in vivid vignettes. The individual stories are well told with lots of delicious English detail, both fun and compelling to read.

But alas, the sum is lesser than the parts. As a whole, the book became hard to read: I often felt lost in a deluge of descriptions without a sense of where things were going or even why I was reading these particular reminiscences. I suspect that a good memoir requires substantial commentary and explanation (as in essay writing, a sort of "let me tell you what I'm telling you"); it cannot be a simple recounting of the author's experiences and sentiments, her actions and motivations.

For instance, there is a lot of friction between Helen and her husband in the middle third of the book. By the last third, the friction has disappeared. Where did it go? She alludes—possibly—to its resolution, but I think the narrative demands more than an allusion. This is merely one example of many in which Helen's own unhappiness or conflict with others resolve without her addressing the resolution, which lets the book come dangerously close to a jumble of contradictions and characters acting out of character. In a memoir—I base this idea on the best memoirs I've read—we should be getting the author's commentary and unifying perspective on her life, not just her scattered memories, which often contradict each other. (The same could be said of her husband's memoir, The Shepherd's Life; his second book, Pastoral Song, which contains autobiography but also a more substantial argument, is a much better read.)

I expected more of a philosophical framework to this book: why homemaking and farming and stewardship of land and family are dignified work. But again, Helen only briefly addresses these ideas, and they certainly don't provide a framework for the book as a whole. The narrative and philosophical threads running through simply aren't strong enough to support the weight of the vignettes.