Half memoir, half short-story collection. Four stars for the delightful memoir essays, a mixture of two and three stars for the short stories. ( )

Elizabeth Enright wrote The Saturdays and the rest of the lovely books about the Melendy family that I absolutely love but I had no idea she had any adult works. This is an interesting one, half essay/memoirs and half short stories. I liked the memoirs more, she has a lovely writing style and seemed to well in that style of vignettes. The short stories I found less successful and the final novella, Doublefields, was just plain weird. If she has more memoirs I think I would enjoy reading those.

Amazingly good. Okay, not so amazing if one considers how great her other books are. The first part is a roughly chronological collection of autobiographical essays. Each of them is delightful, true, gloriously written and far too short. Seventy zillion stars.

Part the second is comprised of short stories, mainly aimed at an adult audience and every bit as engaging and well-written as anything about the Melendys. I believe that I found a slightly altered Mark in the story called Rex. Five stars.

The third part is the titular novella, which is a creepy piece from the point of view of a creepy rich guy. Effective but somehow not of a piece with the rest. Three stars.

Man, I wish she'd written more autobiographical stuff. And at least one novel for grownups. What a fabulous talent she had.

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