A really engaging story, was totally unprepared for the ending. ( )

Mantel's gifts of machete-sharp observation and narration are on view here, and they are enough to make this worth reading. Even though I'm a pretty close contemporary of the girls and young women she portrays, the world of working-class England, suffocating "faith-based" schooling, Catholic religiosity, and the college system is all a foreign country to me (I'm a Yank). It all sounds truly awful. The travails and woes and nastiness of the "girls" were painfully familiar, and I didn't particular enjoy reading about any of them. You can see, though, Mantel's particular skill for the games people play, the ambiguities and paradoxes of character, how people you might mostly despise will surprise you with generosity, or how a core ugliness can be managed or overlooked until they leap out and appall you, whether in a girls' college or in the Tudor court or the revolutionary tribunals in France. An early effort, but you can see the brilliance beginning to smolder and flare. ( )

A coming of age novel with a dispassionate first person narrator, an examination of what might have made her who she is, and a sense that we'll never know. And, at the same time, an exposition of class, regional, and religious prejudices and ideas about women and their education.

I've read this before, but not for some years, and in the meantime it's remained with me only sufficiently to give a sense of déjà vu. The shock at the end came as, well, a shock.

Een boek over drie meisjes van 6 tot 18 jaar. Over vriendschap maar vooral ook rivaliteit, eten of juist niet eten en over vriendjes, zwangerschap, abortus. De beschrijvingen van eten zijn soms walgelijk. Ik was wel geboeid maar vond het geen fijn boek om te lezen. ( )

on some level, this is a book about being lost - in new surroundings and schedules, among other people, within our own thoughts and desires. but on another it's an intense personal drama centred on a triad of girls, with a mysterious tragedy ending the book. the union of the two is impressive: intimacy with huge social reverberations. ( )