Jyl Felman is an excellent writer who captures very moving and powerful experiences in an economical style that held my attention and had me wanting more. Ms. Felman juggles many emotions in this short work. The reader finds herself dealing with mother/daughter relationships, Jewish history, feminism, lesbianism, the Holocaust, and food.
On the oher hand I have to admit, that I like others felt that her book was self-indulgent, self-pleasing WHICH IS indeed the right of an auther and not due to their readers preferences.
Her usage of indecipherable punctuation has been critizised by many but still fits perfectly as it makes the novel so personal as one would expect this out of a biographical piece - still "almost every other paragraph seems to be either a request for pity or a request that one concur that the world is a rotten place. In transactional analysis, such cynisism and victimhood is known as grievance collecting, and one does begin to feel that one is functioning as Ms. Felman's therapist."
I agree but still recommend this book for it is compelling and contains a lot of knowledge of Jewish history and psychological insight.