No Permanent Scars by Michael Hemery

I must disclose that I got this book for free as a review copy from LibraryThing... but don't let that scare you away. It's actually a really good, enjoyable read. This book is a non-fiction collection of essays that details the author's life. In essence, it is a memoir, but not one that is told necessarily as one continuous narrative.  Its stories jump from time period to time period in the author's life and aren't in chronological order.

I really enjoyed this book much more than I thought that i would. Lately, I've been reading a lot of memoirs, so I thought that I would be memoir'ed out, but this one actually gave me a lot energy.  I attribute that to how Hemery actually writes. The stories were short and written in elegant language, but they were still really richly done. It was almost like reading a novel. The people that i met were so memorable. I felt like I was there with Hemery listening to them as they spoke. For instance, Hemery spends a period of time working on his uncle's farm, helping to pick and process garlic.  I felt as if I could smell the garlic and hear his uncle talk to him and feel the swarm of bugs around his head. 

The book flew by.  I would highly recommend this book to anyone - it's exactly as a memoir should be.