This book feels like memoir, and I wish she had written it that way, because it doesn't quite work as a novel. It is an autobiographical coming of age story that takes place in 1970's Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) featuring a young woman who, with both luck and hard work, is able to move out of the very poor and very sexist world she was born into. But there really isn't a plot, and the reader is treated to a long series of frequently dreadful family anecdotes, which are sometimes interesting, sometimes hard to read, and often tedious.