They can be if you're author Frank McCourt. Oldest of seven children, he chronicles his childhood, which was mostly spent in the Limerick slums in Ireland.
Nothing can compare with the Irish version . . .
McCourt is an expert at telling his story from the viewpoint of a child. He sees death through the eyes of a child and believes that new life arrives with the aid of the Angel on the Seventh Step. As he grows in years, so does he grow in knowledge, and we as readers follow along with him. Through young Frankie's eyes, the readers learn the tragic death of three of his siblings and join him with his mother on begging for food missions. The reader searches the local pubs with him for his alcoholic father and watches him steal fruit from orchards and milk bottles from houses to avoid total starvation.