I love how the trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled, how the children’s mother has a face that was as broad and innocent as a cabbage, how the grandmother—believing in her own empty propriety—wears white gloves, dispenses meaningless commentary and advice, eats a peanut butter sandwich and a single olive in the family car on a trip she does not want to take, on a trip no one in the family wants her to take. I love how the tension of the trip is imprisoned in the car, how it is the backdrop for the tragedy.

I love the perfect names—John Wesley & June Star, Red Sammy Butts, Pitty Sing, Bobby Lee and Hiram and the Misfit.

I love the way the grandmother’s self-righteousness and stubborn need to asset her importance in a family that treats her as little more than a nuisance jolts out of a demi-sleep, certain that she recognizes the landscape as a place from her past and I love the lie she weaves from that mistake: ‘There was a secret panel in this house’, she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing she were. I love what but wishing she were does: recreate the pinpoint pain of the grandmother’s lost chances, create the inevitable pinpoint doom of the now excited children discovering their grandmother has lied, imply what might have happened had she been telling the truth.

I love the miracle of the three sentences when she realizes that the place she’s convinced her son to stop is actually in another state and how her fear is so supreme that it sparks a physical reaction—her feet jump up—upsetting the valise where she has hidden her cat, who springs up and wraps itself around Bailey’s neck causing the car and all its unlikable passengers to roll into a ditch.

I love that the whole tragedy is the Grandmother’s fault. And how it’s not.

The autobiographical genre holds a lot of appeal for me, as both a writer and a reader. I often find myself wishing I could erase or reword something in one of my books, but that’s nothing compared to the intense desire to start ripping pages of other people’s books whenever I come across one of my memoir-related pet peeves. Like autobiographies themselves, these gripes are easily divisible for the sake of sub-categorization. For instance, is it not time for a moratorium on “quiet awe” as an acceptable response to one’s first viewing of the Taj Mahal? Adjectives like “poopy”, “yummy” and “soccer” are words for parents and authors who write about their experiences as parents to rage against, not embrace (and while we’re at it, let’s pillory the idiot who coined the term “momoir.” ) As far as culinary reminiscences go, now that I’m a food memoirist myself, my plate’s heaped high with bones to pick:

Exquisite, Miniscule Portions Glistening Like Jewels: This kind of twee description makes me want to storm the Bastille. Unless the author has demonstrated an equal willingness to hork down a heaping helping from a fly-specked, outer-borough street stall, I refuse to stomach such fawning over a $23 appetizer. I’ll take the phrase “glinted malevolently” over “glistened like jewels” any day!

The Picturesque Old Lady Who Presses Her Own Olive Oil: I’ve got no beef with the old lady, per se. It’s more the verbal diarrhea she inspires in the culinary pilgrims who follow her back to the tumbledown villa her family has inhabited for centuries, marveling at every cobblestone and noting the similarities between her gnarled yet capable fingers and the twisted branches in her orchard. I find myself hoping that the old lady will whip out a cell phone and start talking about how much she loves the Olive Garden. “They’ve got the best Early Bird specials and unlimited refills on breadsticks!”