Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée

Simone de Beauvoir looks back on her first twenty years, from her birth in 1908 into a bourgeois Parisian family. She describes her strict Catholic upbringing, her father's disappointment that she was not a boy, her close friendship with Zaza, which ended with Zaza's early death, and her education at the Sorbonne. She tells how she broke with the religion and conventions of her class and her determination to become a writer. The book ends with her meeting Jean-Paul Sartre in 1929.

Readers interested in feminist history, French intellectual life, and autobiography will find a clear and honest account of a woman making her own path. It is the first volume of her memoirs and makes a good starting point for her work.

Deep and inward-looking; a moderate read.

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