Unless, of course, your mom was doped up on Valium, you broke your back falling from a tree and you had to use those giant sanitary napkin contraptions with belts and straps. I guess it doesn't matter where or when you spend your formative years, there's a whole lot of crap to deal with. I like memoirs, as a rule. They're kind of voyeuristic. Space fails a bit in achieving the kind of vulnerable honesty some memoirs so bravely capture, but it's an interesting read nonetheless.
Mom is less than pleased about.
Kercheval does a fantastic job of contrasting the two young sisters, following their lives into adulthood. Carol, the oldest, is cast into the role of early adult, gradually sacrificing her childhood years as it becomes evident that their mom is incapable of sustaining her parental role. Basically, unless you have the kind of celebrity status the general public craves, memoirs have to tell a good, compelling story. Kercheval captures the feeling of childhood with a subjective degree of adult perspective. When she gives in to sentimentality, she just as quickly rears back into a safer realm of detachment that can only come through maturation.