The Kids Are All Right is a memoir written by four siblings Dan, Diana, Amanda and Liz Welch. The book spans their childhood from the death of their father in a car accident to their mother’s death from cancer to the years beyond that as they spend their childhoods scattered among relatives and family friends, separated from each other.

I’m not normally a fan of memoirs – I find it questionable how authors can remember so many events with such detail. It strikes me as a little suspect, and I tend to read memoirs as though they were fiction (a recent example is The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls – an incredible book that moved me tremendously but I couldn’t come to grips with how she could remember with such astounding detail). The Kids are All Right was different in that it isn’t uncommon to have the four narrators contradict each other, or even say, “I don’t remember what happened next.”

I really enjoyed the different elements brought to the book by each of the different narrators. As they differed in age, each of the siblings were able to tell more or less depending on their age at the time – particularly interesting is how drastically different the youngest sibling and oldest sibling experienced the death of their father.

While the subject matter was definitely a tough one, I found this to be an enjoyable read.

What’s next on your “to read” list?