Sometimes it's good to read a memoir like this to remind you of just how fortunate your own life has been. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this book - I'd heard it was extremely depressing, but although it paints a bleak picture of a near-starving childhood of abject poverty, the author somehow keeps an optimistic outlook and the determination to escape his situation, which (since this is a memoir, not fiction) he clearly succeeded in doing. I'm sure that a child's memory may have blurred some of the details but it's nonetheless an interesting look into the country and politics of the time, not to mention the hopeless situation of the young mothers who are wholly dependent on their husbands to provide (or not) for sick and starving children.