So I’m around 25% into this so maybe this gets answered at some point, but I wanted to see what y’all thought…are all the animals realistically sized? Or are they all the same size? Like is Lenore a big raven, and gladys an extra giant hummingbird? How does this work??

The only reason I wanna know so badly is because I’m so charmed by this book that I want to beeee part of it 😭

One thing that has stood out to me so far is Westover’s ability to place readers directly inside her childhood perspective without excusing or minimizing what happened. She recounts events that, from the outside, can feel shocking or even horrifying, yet she presents them with the same normalcy she experienced at the time. That contrast makes these moments stand out in our understanding of the severity of how isolated they were. We are able to see both the child’s understanding and the adult’s awareness simultaneously.

I also appreciate her honesty about memory itself. Rather than presenting her recollections as unquestionable fact, she openly acknowledges the limitations of memory and the possibility that others may remember events differently. In a memoir, that level of transparency feels especially important. Our memories are shaped by time, perspective, emotion, and experience, and Westover seems very aware of that.

She’s not claiming to have a perfect record of the past; she’s inviting us into her understanding of it. That willingness to examine both the events themselves and the way memory preserves or distorts them has been one of the most compelling themes of the memoir so far. 🙂‍↕️

I don’t know about y’all but reading the English from Ketahn’s POV was fun as hell!

I think the author did a great job conveying that the language was foreign to Ketahn but still let the readers humorously understand what was going on