Malcolm Jones' memoir "Little Boy Blues" stood out for me more for what it doesn't say than for what it does.

It's not the vivid description of a disintegrating marriage touted on the cover flap. How could it be? Jones was not privy to all the factors the led to his parents' break-up. He was a child, an observer unable to comprehend the full import of certain events going on around him.

That's actually what I enjoyed about it. It's not told in a woe-is-me fashion. He shows an amazing acceptance of his parents' shortcomings, perhaps because an absentee father and mother consumed by her idea of respectability are all he has known. Perhaps because as he writes, "Death forces you to realize that there is no more to be said, that what was said is all there is or will be."

I closed the book and thought, if only I could be more accepting of the people in my life that way they are.

- Tricia Ambrose