Set in post-war Switzerland, Fleur Jaeggy's 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 offhanded 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 seemingly 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.