This novel is like a walk down an unlit alley at night, alone, in the
rain. The narrator is a girl at a boarding school in postwar
Switzerland. Through her heightened senses we become aware of the
awakening sexuality of the young girls far away from the familiarities
of home and the impending doom and madness that lurk at the gate.
Imprisoned in an artificial reality, she portrays the other inmates in
a sardonic light. The narrator's friendship and obsession with the
ideal new girl, Frederique, bring to mind lines from Baudelaire's
Flowers of Evil: "Moment by moment, Time envelops me/ like a stiffening
body buried in the snow.../ I contemplate the infinitesimal globe,/ and
I no longer seek asylum there" ("Craving for Oblivion").