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Title: A terrible life
Review: This is such a beautifully written book, full of pathos and half truths, telling the story of a beautiful girl and her equally beautiful mother. Scandinavian blondes, with startlingly blue eyes, the women attract attention from everybody, but the mother, Ingrid, is mentally flawed, living in a world of her own creation and writing poetry, which makes her a kind of cult figure. She poisons her lover after he is unfaithful to her and is sent to jail for a long sentence so that her daughter, Astrid, is placed in foster homes until she is 18 and able to fend for herself. Some of the foster parents are kind and well meaning while others who are in the program purely for the money they recieve, are mean, selfish and cruel, emphasising the aloneness and loneliness of the little girl. It's a stark read which points up the dangers facing a girl child alone in the world without a protector and the ease with which a child is able to slip into a world of squalor, sex and crime.
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