Sylvia Fraser, a successful Canadian journalist, began to remember in her 40s that she had been sexually abused by her father during her childhood. She says the abuse has been corroborated by outside sources and explains that she uses many of the techniques of the novelist . Perhaps this accounts for the author's apparent ability to remember dialogue in detail from decades previously. Perhaps this also explains why the whole story is so well rounded, which led this reader to ask - is real life like that? Well, to be fair to the author, real life is like that, in memory - memory sorts, sifts and edits and it doesn't mean the memories are untrue. There is no reason to disbelieve Ms Fraser's account. I just wish it wasn't so accomplished. Her book mingles accounts of ordinary life with short, italicised memories of abuse, a method which throws a sinister shadow over the reader's mind as all accounts of sexual abuse in the home do, by destroying the innocence of the ordinary with a stain of evil.