This novel was writen in his later lifePip, a boy of the marshes, is being "raised by hand" by his shrieking harridan of an older sister and her seemingly doltish husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery.
At a family dinner over the holidays, my mother, who was seated next to me, turned to me and said, " Where's Annie? " My funny and beautiful and feisty mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's.