I would have been totally cuckoo for this book when I was younger -- I really liked it this time, but yeah. I can see having been a young girl, and finding this book somehow and just being over the moon for the whole thing. I loved stories that were so far out of my realm -- a Swiss boarding school in the late 40s?! but still connected somehow. I love the way the main character, Flip, sometimes can only relate to the beauty of her surroundings. She's a flawed, interesting person who grows up in a situation in which she originally might have completely sunk.