McCracken says this is a novel, not a memoir. Instead, it is a tribute to her parents, mostly her mother, whom she sorely misses. The narrator goes to London and describes revisiting places she had visited with her mother. Along the way, she tells the story of her mother, who was against memoirs because she favored privacy. McCracken claims she can hide things in fiction and not own them. Therefore, telling the world about her mother in a designated piece of fiction, where readers cannot detect the line between fact and fiction, would not violate her mother’s desire to remain unknown and unexposed. The author claims to use “autobiographical emotion,” and she conveys an endearing tale.
The storyteller’s parents were pack rats. They accumulated so much stuff that they lived in squalor. Their house was a fire hazard, and the dust was so thick that coins were trapped. The lifestyle should have been embarrassing for educated, intelligent people, but her mother, who had a Ph.D. and ran the publications department at Boston University, did not see it that way. Their inherited items and the plethora of household paraphernalia brought them joy, and their daughter secretly found some of their useless junk great mementos. The narrative mentions more than once that her mother had a birth injury, not a defect. She wasn’t “a cripple,” as a friend once claimed. On the contrary, her mother perambulated and hated the words disabled and lame. Despite some disagreements and wonderment, the first-person narrator had the utmost respect and love for her mother, the hero, and recognized the mother/daughter relationship’s impact on her life.
