Author:  Ludwig Bemelman
Publisher: Signet P2008
Year: 1961
Print: 1
Cover Price:$.60
Condition: Very Good. Reading crease. Pages tanning.
Genre: Adult Fiction
Cover Art: 
SKU: 60116029E

KIRKUS REVIEW Punishments and not love are rules for the teller of this chronicle of revolt -- the unnamed daughter of a French militarist, a Spanish mother, and the sister of Hugo, as unhappy as she. A martinet and a perfectionist, her father, in command of a regiment and cavalry school, takes his children from the kind, careless hands of their two nurses, and learns, when he sends the girl to a convent, that her defiance becomes an obligatory obstinacy. He learns, too, from a stay in Spain, that his daughter is finding out how to live within herself and, after a return to France, and then on to occupied Germany, and another session in a convent, the girl turns out to be a match for not only parental supervision but also the reprisals of the enemy. For with Hugo, and their friends, Alain and his sister Veronique, she is committed to the belief that they are monsters because of their parents and the answer is violence. Military orders are the cause of Veronique's death, and a major misdemeanor banishes Hugo and Alain -- but the girl is ready to join with Alain on his return for whatever any kind of future may hold, convinced she is "judge of my sins, of my acts and of my faults." A hard fibred Sagan quality here attends childish retaliations and young adult despair and creates an atmosphere of a world apart. For Bemelmans' followers this is a change of pace and it is not for the casual, average novel reader.