Cambridge

By: Susanna Kaysen

Narrated by: Käthe Mazur

"It was probably because I was so often taken away from Cambridge when I was young that I loved it as much as I did . . . "

So begins this novel-from-life by the best-selling author of Girl, Interrupted, an exploration of memory and nostalgia set in the 1950s among the academics and artists of Cambridge, Massachusetts. London, Florence, Athens: Susanna, the precocious narrator of Cambridge, would rather be home than in any of these places.

Uprooted from the streets around Harvard Square, she feels lost and excluded in all the locations to which her father's career takes the family. She comes home with relief-but soon enough wonders if outsiderness may be her permanent condition.Written with a sharp eye for the pretensions-and charms-of the intellectual classes, Cambridge captures the mores of an era now past, the ordinary lives of extraordinary people in a singular part of America, and the delights, fears, and longings of childhood.

©2014 Susanna Kaysen (P)2014 Tantor

Critic reviews

"A literary tour-de-force displaying Kaysen's unique talent for creating an engaging ensemble cast that comes uniquely alive under adolescent eyes . . . Affectingly real." ( Publishers Weekly)

Relatable

I related so much to Susanna in this coming of age autobiography/ fiction ( I believe it is a combination of both) I was also the oldest daughter and found it challenging to fit in at school and in my family. Knowing that Susanna went on to experience, and write about, being institutionalized for her feelings of disassociation and outsideness, there are so many hints of this in Cambridge. Yes, there are slow parts in the book, but there are also amusing observations and wonderful descriptions of her family’s time in Europe. Excellent narration too.