Alexandra Fuller has the ability to completely capture a moment or a person's character in a perfect sentence or a well-placed quote. Just as when I read her first memoir, I was completely immersed in her portrait of her family and a vanished society; her thoughts on the inevitable but long-drawn-out end of that society, its costs, and the nature of healing and survival are beautiful and gracefully written.

The book starts a little slowly, but builds powerfully. I had to put the book down and take a break at the chapter "Olivia" because I'd read the first book and knew what was coming, but another loss later I had forgotten, and the terribleness of that moment was presented in all its layers (the sadness, the indifference of the nurses and why). The last couple of chapters feel redemptive. I don't know if her mother will read another of her Awful Books, but this one is a complex, fascinating, and deeply loving portrait.