In English, The Horse Without a Head is one of my top ten favorite books EVER. Ever. I must have read it about 40 times in English; this is the second time I've read it in French. Having read 3 or 4 novels en francais in the past year, I think it's fair to say that the prose here is the most difficult I've come across--full of slang and technical terms (the setting is brutally urban, a busy rail junction and industrial area in post world-war-two Parisian slums), and the plot is so darn full of twists and turns that I STILL can't quite follow it. But the ten kids are WONDERFUL and the details are so incredibly evocative that you just skip over the bits you can't follow. Marion, la fille aux chiens, is my original hero--with her green eyes and man's jacket and sixty slavering dogs who obey her every whim--and the scenes of mayhem in the abandoned costume-and-gag factory are just... indescribable. The villains are evil, the heroes youthful and honorable, brave and destitute, and Gaby's gang even includes a couple of minority kids... this in a book written in 1955.

I first read it at the age of 7 in a Book-of-the-Month club edition published in the US in 1958, translated by John Buchanan-Brown and grittily illustrated by Richard Kennedy. The same translation was published in the UK, but for the US edition they edited out all references to A) the kids smoking (!!!) and B) the grown-ups sharing an occasional glass of wine! Apart from that, the US edition is curiously more elegant and readable than its British counterpart, suggesting a better editor (despite its having been cleaned up for its 1950s American audience). I won't tell you the title of the British version, as it is a MASSIVE SPOILER for the denouement. WHYYYY??? Why would any editor do such a thing?

Long out of print in all three countries, if you can get hold of any edition I highly recommend it. Even if I still don't know what the heck a box of mimosa is.