Mama Dear

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Christine Haidegger has Irene, her protagonist, tell in her own words her story of living in World-War-II Europe and the aftermath. Irene, in acquiring language, also acquires her view of the strange circumstances around air-raid shelter, front, concentration camp. As her language grows up, so do her the end of the war, the arrival of the American soldiers, her mother's daily struggle for survival, the meanness of most villagers toward her mother, a born German in reborn Austria and a Protestant exposed to the bigotry of Roman Catholic institutions. -- A keen observer and an avid reader, Irene at age ten receives a scholarship to an exclusive boarding school. Separated from her beloved mother, hounded by never-ending rules and orders, pressured by her own desire to achieve, Irene, still a child, still wanting to understand, is slowly destroyed.