From Booklist
Cambridge, Massachusetts, is seven-year-old Susanna’s everything. She’s an anxious child and, as such, takes great comfort in the familiarity of her neighborhood. But at the start of second grade, in the 1950s, her father, a Harvard economics professor, uproots the family for a dark, damp sabbatical in England—where she’s introduced to that other Cambridge. Once the family is back home again, the chapters focus on the minutiae of daily life: boredom in school; her friendship with the son of two psychoanalysts; the complexities of her relationship with her mother; and music lessons with an Indian conductor. Sixth grade is once again spent abroad, this time in Greece, where it’s one hot, dusty field trip after the next. When Susanna returns to Cambridge for the duration, the city’s changed—or perhaps she’s changed—as she notes that her childhood, a mostly unhappy one, has passed. Kaysen, the best-selling author of Girl, Interrupted (1993), offers a melancholic, poignant, and sharply observed account of a precocious child’s struggle to make sense of her place in the family and in the larger world. --Ann Kelley
Review
“This latest novel from Kaysen follows a character named Susanna from the second to the sixth grade, taking her through four countries, a Swedish nanny, and a Brahman piano teacher who never makes her play. Susanna is a curious girl whose travels often leave her awestruck. She leads an unconventional life and is not happy about it. Awkward and lonely, she has only one friend her age . . . What she does love is the English language, and Susanna’s facility with language allows Kaysen to create tension and humor.” —Pamela Mann,
Library Journal “Touching . . . Loosely based on the author’s own childhood, this travelogue is narrated by a nine-year-old who must spend two years living in England, Italy, and Greece despite her fervent wish to be home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I really enjoyed the book, which reads a bit like a journal. I loved the narrator’s bittersweet realization that ‘home’ isn’t a physical locale, but rather a place that exists only in memories.” —Sarai Narvaez,
Real Simple“This raw, biting autobiographical novel from the author of
Girl, Interrupted frequently lights up to the point of incandescence with subtle descriptions and astute, witty anecdotes [as] Susanna, a young girl with complicated parental relations, recalls her formative years, traveling from English shores to Grecian temples. A literary tour-de-force displaying Kaysen’s unique talent for creating an engaging ensemble cast that comes uniquely alive under adolescent eyes . . . Affectingly real.” —
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