Olivia by Olivia

Olivia

Olivia

“When, at 16, Olivia left her English family to spend a year in a French finishing school near Paris, she moved into an atmosphere of intellectual and spiritual aliveness such as she had never known. Mile Julie, the brilliant headmistress of the school, introduced her to the world of literature, theatre, good food, and smart conversation. Sensitive and intelligent, Olivia responded with an adolescent intensity of passionate gratitude. Unknowingly, she also developed a more complex relationship with Mile Julie . . . Olivia fell in love.

Telling the story from the vantage point of an older woman looking back on her girlhood, the adult Olivia is able to put together many of the pieces of her candid and intense story. And in her descriptions of the emotionally-fraught conflicts and jealousies of the other students and teachers who surrounded her, she brings great passion to the inevitably tragic ending.

OLIVIA was the pen name used by Dorothy Strachey Bussy (1866-1960), an older sister of biographer and essayist Lytton Strachey. The novel is apparently autobiographical; Dorothy did go off to Les Ruches, a boarding school in France run by Marie Souvestre, a worldly intellectual. After leaving Les Ruches, Souvestre started another school near the Strachey home in England and became a great friend to the family, especially Lytton, who credited her with introducing him to all things literary.’

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