I rate the first half of the book five stars and the second half three stars; so I am settling on four stars.

Rosemary is the most fun, quirky narrator of a story I have read for a long time. I really enjoyed her and I love the way she colours her memories with little unimportant details, describes the smells of her family members and always starts a story in the middle and then jumps around at will. There are themes of sadness, loss, family and comedy running throughout her story. Though, as she would say, this is really as close to the stories of her brother Lowell and sister Fern that she can tell. Their stories are the ones she finds important.

I was less fond of the more factual accounts of the scientific experiments throughout the book. I kept finding them jarring against the tone of the fictional story. It just didn’t work for me and I wondered was there no other narrative device to get these important messages across? Perhaps a book told more from Lowell’s and/or Ferns perspective?

Overall this is a fast, fun read and has a rather important message at it’s core