Her book does not purport to be a memoir. It is a memoir. If the people she describes in it are composite characters, then surely they are fictional too? - That's why I said 'purports'. If it'ds a memoir, then they're not fully fictional characters are they? granted that the lines between fact and fiction and very often blurred in memoir, and fictionalised memoir is a sub-genre all of it's own, it still sits uncomfortably with how it was marketed, ie as a memoir. So her defence of composite characters, when coupled with the specificity of some of the descriptions, is what makes it uncomfortable.
I never said it was a book for children. I was just musing on the role of less than flattering physical descriptions in fiction.
So a writer should only describe other people who have the same level of power as she does? That's... not going to work. - Nope, not what I said. But I do think the uncomfortable nature of the Clanchy book rests partly on the power imbalance and the fact that she's describing children from the viewpoint of a more privileged and experienced person, implicitly linking physical descriptions to specific events in the lives of the characters (and unpleasant events, like SA), plus the blurred lines between fiction and memoir.
Also, I understand what she's trying to do - classic pen portraits - but I felt she's not a good enough prose writer to get away with it. Which is where the editor should have come in, and pulled her back down to earth a bit.