Here's the issue: I can fully understand why people would love this book but I don't. It has down-to-earth people depicted as caricatures while still being real. It's like sitting with someone, flipping through a photo album, and hearing all the stories about all the people in the pictures. I can understand why someone would love that, but personally I do not. There's no sense of the timing of when events happen, just a general before/during/after WW2. I was uncomfortable with how often the father would be "flying into a rage" but equally that line got so boring from how many times it happened; I understand that's probably the aim of the repetition but it just didn't work for me.

is all memory fiction or does the simple urge to preserve the past make it inherently fact? 

this book is so funny because all families are weird and funny in their own way. I found myself laughing out loud throughout