This book can be seen either as a collection of eleven stories that is almost a novel or as a novel broken up into eleven stories It resembles a photograph album - a series of clearly observed moments that trace the course of a life, and also the lives intertwined with it - those of parents, of siblings, of children, of friends, of enemies, of teachers, and even of animals And as in an album, times change the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, the 70s and 80s, the present time - all are here The settings are equally varied large cities, suburbs, farms, northern forests