Lalage's Lovers

Lalage Beresford is fourteen years old, utterly unconvinced that the world has anything to teach her, and absolutely determined to prove it. In this early twentieth-century comic delight, she wages witty warfare against her governess Miss Battersby (whom she has rechristened 'Cattersby' with the confidence of a child who has never met an authority she couldn't rename), retreats to the pigsty when the house becomes unbearable, and charmingly entangles a bemused churchwarden in her escapades. George A. Birmingham writes with a light touch that makes Lalage's rebellions feel not just forgivable but glorious: her critiques of the adults around her are sharp enough to draw blood, yet delivered with such cheerful irreverence that you can't help but root for her. The book works as both a portrait of adolescent insufferableness at its most lovable and a sly satire of the pretensions of the people who presume to mold young minds. What makes it endure is not sentiment but its refusal to sentimentalize: Lalage is maddening, brilliant, and completely herself.