"From the outside we looked like a typical happy family; it was an image we worked hard to achieve (P. 14)"

Whether a book is good or not does not only depend on what it is about, but how everything is narrated. This includes the types of words the author uses. Helen Fremont's diction is definitely informal. Her vocabulary isn't very complex, which makes the memoir easy to understand. However, there's something that sets this memoir apart from other books with informal diction: While she mostly uses regular vocabulary, Fremont adds a childish word or term here and there throughout the chapter. She probably does this to strengthen the reader's understanding that she was only a kid when all this happened.

Instead of saying that her friends told her her parents had a strange accent in English, she says they told her her "parents spoke funny English (P. 7)." If you're a grown-up, you won't describe the way somebody talks as "funny." But kids use this adjective to describe about anything, from the taste of food to a smell, and so this time she uses it to describe the way someone talks. Also, when Fremont is describing her dad, she says he was "twice as tall as other daddies (P. 9)." "Daddy" is a word most commonly used by little kids, so the fact that she's using it helps the reader understand that she's talking about when she was a little girl.

Throughout the first chapter, Helen Fremont narrates several experiences from her life. She doesn't directly give details about what will happen later on in the book, but gives hints instead. This way she gives just enough information to keep the reader intrigued. For example, as she talks about her house, she says, "We moved in just after I was born, after they'd [her parents] changed their names to Bocard and settled into their new American identity (P.10)."The reader has no idea why Helen's parents changed their identities, but now s/he has an idea of what will happen next and will keep on reading to find out the details.

Helen gives many hints throughout the first chapter. Just as I was beginning to feel afraid that she might keep doing this for long enough for it to get boring, she finished the chapter in what I consider the perfect way: "What I didn't realize was that all our names had been recently invented. My mother had survived the war using a false name and papers; she had escaped from the Nazis dressed as an Italian soldier, under yet another name and false papers. My parents had changed our family name upon applying for citizenship in the United States. To this day I don't even know what my mother's real name is (P. 18)." And just like that, the first chapter is over, leaving the reader hanging.