Rob Baker’s Reviews > My Family and Other Animals > Status Update

"Outside, the warm wind would shoulder the shutters, making them creak, and the raindrops would chase each other down the window-pane like transparent tadpoles" (96).

"Mother spent a lot of her spare time choosing places to be buried in, but they were generally situated in the most remote areas, and one had visions of the funeral cortège dropping exhausted by the wayside long before it had reached the grave" (99).

"Gradually the magic of the island setteld over us as gently and clingingly as pollen. Each day had a tranquiility, a timelessness, about it, so that you wished it would never end. But then the dark skin of night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us, glossy and colourful like a child's transfer and with the same tinge of unreality" (46).

I have a library copy that is about 4" x 6" with a built-in cloth bookmark...and 372 pages instead of 273...