About the memoir
Lexington, Kentucky in the Fifties. An old woman, a governess, a small boy and a strange house.
Excerpt
Breakfast was a difficult passage for me.
Grandmother apparently believed quite fervently that unsweetened oatmeal, swimming in milk, was a particular favorite of little boys. One look at her gray-blue eyes (and her interminable aquiline nose) silenced any thoughts I had of contradiction. If porridge would not make me happy, she occasionally offered me grandfather's first choice: an egg cooked as he liked it, just three minutes. That it was raw and barely warm—and that grandfather had died well before my second birthday—seemed to matter to no one in that house. On the contrary, it appeared only to inspire a fiercer adherence to his tastes.
