Larcom's language is elegant, but in the end I often wanted more specifics of life, and less rhetoric. It read more like an extended essay on the transformation of child to adult, and the beginnings of a writer, as opposed to an autobiography. I enjoyed it well enough, but there wasn't anything here to drive me to ever come back to it for any purpose, or pass it on to another reader unless the book could appeal to extremely specific tastes on the other reader's part. ( )