Part of the Ocean

I was belligerent, aggressive, confrontational, intransigent, with an adversarial attitude, and by no means the sweet little girl of my mother's dreams'. Well, who wouldn't be a difficult child, given Dode Sinzheimer's extraordinary background? Parents who talked German; a mother who tried to kill herself; an uncle who did; a father used to comforts who, being an 'enemy alien', couldn't earn a living; a brother with an identity crisis . . . all that, plus boils and tooth braces and wartime rationing! Dode's transformation from ugly attention-seeking duckling to full-feathered swan spreading her wings is the main theme of this enchanting memoir. Her happy befriendings in Surrey by two Richmond families - the Leinses and the Ropers - teased out of her the powerful imagination that enlivens these recollections, and also gave her a strong urge to find a better, more positive lifestyle. How she finds it, and where, is revealed in these scenes from childhood and adolescence. Here too is the conflict many of us feel when addressing our spiritual side, which the author does first through Christianity and finally - and more happily - through her own blood-borne Jewish faith, becoming, as she puts it, 'part of the ocean'.