Sweet Days of DisciplineSet in postwar Switzerland, Fleur Jaeggy's eerily beautiful novel begins simply and innocently enough: "At fourteen I was a boarder in a school in the Appenzell". But there is nothing truly simple or innocent here. With the off-handed knowingness of a remorseless young Eve, the narrator describes life as a captive of the school and her designs to win the affections of the apparently perfect new girl, Frederique. As she broods over her schemes as well as on the nature of control and madness, the novel gathers a suspended, unsettling energy. Now translated into six languages, I beati anni del castigo in its Italian original won the 1990 Premio Bagutta and the 1990 Premio Speciale Rapallo. In Tim Parks' consummate translation (with its "spare, haunting quality of a prose poem"), Sweet Days of Discipline was selected as one of the London Times Literary Supplement's Notable Books of 1992: "In a period when novels are generally over-blown and scarcely portable, it is good to be able to recommend (one that is) miraculously short and beautifully written". |
Contents
Section 1 | 1 |
Section 2 | 5 |
Section 3 | 9 |
Section 4 | 13 |
Section 5 | 17 |
Section 6 | 22 |
Section 7 | 32 |
Section 8 | 38 |
Section 11 | 60 |
Section 12 | 67 |
Section 13 | 71 |
Section 14 | 75 |
Section 15 | 82 |
Section 16 | 85 |
Section 17 | 88 |
Section 18 | 93 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
already Andalusia Appenzell asked Bausler Institut beauty blue boarders boarding school body Brasil cheerfulness cold corridor cupboards curtsey Daddy dark daughter DAYS OF DISCIPLINE dead distracted doll door dress érique everything eyes face father felt FLEUR JAEGGY flowers folded forehead Frau Hofstetter Fréd Frédérique spoke Frédérique's French Gallen gave German girl goodbye greeted hair happy head headmistress heard Herr Hofstetter husband idyll kind kiss knew lake Lake Constance laugh learnt letters little black girl little girl living looked Madame Marion Mère préfète Micheline Micheline's morning mother superior never old woman's hands Ovaltine perhaps petits fours pullovers reverend mothers room-mate round seemed sitting sleep smile someone Sometimes SWEET DAYS Swiss talking tap dance teachers Teufen thing thought tidy told took voice walk wall wanted washbasins watched Wengen window woman word write younger girls