Cambridge by Susanna Kaysen

I picked this book up off the "new releases" shelves at the Rapid City Public Library. It was a good choice. The narrator in this story, Susanna, grows from about six or eight years of age to about 13. The story chronicles her thinking and fascinating life as a daughter growing up in the fifties, with her father, a Harvard professor, and her mother, a sparkling stay-at-home mother. The family spends years abroad in the English Cambridge, in Italy, and in Greece. Susanna's reactions and thinking capture some of my thinking and feelings at this age very accurately. While Susanna is very different than I was at that age, there are similarities. She feels alien in her family; which I occasionally did. Her careful listening to her parents' disagreements and her interpretations of them felt very familiar to me. She has a nuanced ear for emotions behind the words.
I enjoyed reading about her relationships with her Swedish nanny and her mother, in particular. And it's interesting that she never gives her little sister much credence or even tells us her name. But what was especially intriguing to me was her intense dislike of her mother, and how it angered her that her mother was always right and always knew what she was thinking. She could verify her father's knowledge in the encyclopedia, but her mother's assertions were baffling to her. How did she know those things? It reminded me very strongly of Leonard's frustration with his mother over similar issues. She asserts things with great confidence that "everyone knows" but really aren't true. Like..."50% of football players are homosexuals."
I also enjoyed reading about Susanna's music lessons and her fondness for her teacher. It's just a fascinating age to reconnect with and the author does a very credible job of recreating that thinking.