This lovely wisp of a novel came to me at just the right time -- I had just finished Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, and although Breath, Eyes, Memory is not a memoir, it is particularly autobiographical fiction and is narrated by a young woman who experiences a dramatic relocation as an integral part of her coming of age. In this case, Sophie Caco moves from her native Haiti to New York City.

I love books about relocations like this because when I was sixteen my family moved from small-town Alaska to southeast Michigan, which was an enormous cultural shift for me. In some ways it feels very insignificant because at sixteen, I felt very fully-formed and mature, and only two years later I went away to college, so in a way it just feels like one elongated, natural transition from adolescence to adulthood. But in other ways it feels like a major and formative turning point in my life because it probably dramatically changed the outcome of that transitional period.

I certainly wouldn't assert that I share much in common with either Edwidge Danticat or Jacqueline Woodson's experiences, but I really enjoy reading about something I experienced through so many different perspectives.