From the first line this book utterly captivated me. The narrator, Cecile, is manipulative and immoral, and yet you cannot fail to love her, which is why the book was seen as so scandalous at the time! After all, if she was easy to hate, then the story would be so different - horrible bad girl does bad things with bad consequences. Instead, this is a tale of actions and consequences, stupid decisions, irresponsibility but not of inherent badness or evil, and whilst everything that happens is Ceciles fault, you cannot help but feel utter sympathy for her.

From the first line - "A strange and melancholy feeling pervades me which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sadness" - I was utterly hooked, fascinated and delighted! I could empathise utterly with the heroine, who was looking back with bittersweet nostalgia at a time which in spite of the great sorrow and pain caused, remains a beautiful and treasured memory. We all have a time we can think of - when a loved one was dying, or a relationship was endind - where we knew the end was in sight and were deeply unhappy and yet appreciated and enjoyed the time we had. It is the atmosphere of such time, and the pain and joy of such feelings which the author evokes in this story, which is expecially remarkable because of the authors youth when it was written (she was only 18). But then, it is doubtful that an older author could have made such a precocious, and on the face of it nasty character, so utterly loveable and three dimensional.

This is the book I go to when times are terrible, or I am truly unhappy, to remind myself that though pain changed it remains and is important to who we are and what we become.