They Left Us Everything: A Memoir by Plum JohnsonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Losing your parents and having to clean house once they are gone is a strange and sad experience. In They Left Us Everything Plum Johnson documents her own experience of cleaning out the family home once her mother passes. With her siblings, Johnson goes through a wide range of household items, from centuries-old antiques collected by both sides of the family to all of the junk her mother piled up in her last years of life. But it is the house itself that becomes a focal point in the story, letting Johnson relive some of her childhood memories and learn more about her parents.
When I started reading this I thought it would be a straight middle-of-grief memoir and the exploration of what comes next after both parents die. But the book goes off on a few different tangents, such as the family lineage and quite a few pages dedicated to the letters exchanged between her parents during World War II. Although interesting, it seemed like these other stories bogged down the main point of the memoir.
*Received a copy of this book through Penguin First to Read
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