A wealthy but eccentric man offers to take and care for the 5 year old daughter of a poor miner. Less than 20 years later she gives birth to his child.... What could possibly go wrong?
Maude is abused emotionally and physically by her clearly mentally ill father and fearful and complacent mother. She is resilient, and with the help of the family's animals (which are also mistreated), reading, and a few kind people she escapes her parents and makes a life for herself as an adult.
The story felt unfinished to me. There is an epilogue which gives a general (and very vague) update on her life, but so many questions remain. (Is her husband in the book her husband now? How did she go from failing the French equivalent of the SAT to law school?) I would have enjoyed it more had there been less space devoted to her father's wacky ideas, and more about how she overcame her trauma to become a functioning adult.
Maude is abused emotionally and physically by her clearly mentally ill father and fearful and complacent mother. She is resilient, and with the help of the family's animals (which are also mistreated), reading, and a few kind people she escapes her parents and makes a life for herself as an adult.
The story felt unfinished to me. There is an epilogue which gives a general (and very vague) update on her life, but so many questions remain. (Is her husband in the book her husband now? How did she go from failing the French equivalent of the SAT to law school?) I would have enjoyed it more had there been less space devoted to her father's wacky ideas, and more about how she overcame her trauma to become a functioning adult.
This is a book that cured me of any temptation to read what I now think of as "memoir porn."
The writing was poor-- flat and affectless -- and stripped the author's experience of any meaning, except that Bad Things Happened. Because I actually felt bad about abandoning the book -- as if I was walking away from a train wreck, or refusing to acknowledge on-going abuse -- I skipped to the end, assuming that Julien's escape from her nightmarish childhood would be the thread that drew everything together - and it wasn't.
The writing was poor-- flat and affectless -- and stripped the author's experience of any meaning, except that Bad Things Happened. Because I actually felt bad about abandoning the book -- as if I was walking away from a train wreck, or refusing to acknowledge on-going abuse -- I skipped to the end, assuming that Julien's escape from her nightmarish childhood would be the thread that drew everything together - and it wasn't.
