The only places where this book suffered were where the author seemed to want to play coy or just dodge an outright statement. Sometimes her comments were vague, despite having major impact on the people's lives.


*SPOILER ALERT*

In an early story, the author describes a story where the girls are camping out and their mother hears someone in the campsite, and shoots at them. They then discover it was just a cow, and bury the body before moving on so that the owner will not discover it.

Later in the book, in a throwaway sentence, the author says "the cow that was not really a cow at all."

She moves on so quickly that you have to go back and reread the sentence time and again to be sure she really is saying what you think she is saying.

Otherwise, the story is well told and the author's decision to skip around within the time frame works well to tie in common themes and ideas throughout Gypsy's life. I also enjoyed the attention paid to the Minsky brothers story.