ncredible book –  I’m not sure what I expected but it’s a whole lot better.   Maude Julen today is a therapist in France specializing in traumatic disorders in children.  She has the personal background for the job and this is her memoir.  

This book is often compared to of The Glass Castle, but I was never able to finish that book for some reason so I can’t do that comparison.

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The Only Girl in the World
by Maude Julien. (Translated by Adrianna Hunter)
2017 / 289 pages
read by Elizabeth Rogers
rating:  8
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At a very young age Maud’s mother,   , was “adopted” by a man old enough to be her father.  He sent her away to boarding schools to get the best education possible.  He then married her apparently for the purpose of producing a child who would be raised to be a “super-human.”  

The man,  Maud’s father, was born in 1902, fought in WWI, became enamored of Hitler during WWII but was ultimately disappointed.  Then come his own failures in life.  Having delusions of grandeur mixed with bits of conspiracy theories and the occult like extreme Freemasonry and Egyptology he escaped to a small estate in the far northwest of France.  

There he and Maud’s mother raised Maud using methods which were definitely abusive even if she was never hit or starved.  The freedom which saved her was that she was allowed books to read and between them and a few loving animals found the desire and strength to escape.