Quivering Tree - Tapa blanda

This is a sequel to "Opposite the Cross Keys", the author's memoir of her East Anglian childhood. After her father's death in 1930, the 12-year-old Sylvia, determined not to go to London with her mother, chose to board with two spinster schoolmistresses in Norwich. Throughout the ensuing summer her innocence was sorely tried - by stodgy, squat Miss Gosse, who so resembled a King Charles spaniel, by the tyrannical gin-swilling housekeeper and, most of all, by Miss Locke of the mannish haircut and bottom-tweaking tendencies. The author here relives the time she spent in that eccentric household, and recaptures the merciless child's-eye view of the deficiencies of the adult world.