Moving, engaging, informative: two teen girls, best friends in post WWII France, create a scheme where the more gifted one channels literature through the more middle-class one, whose work is more likely to be accepted. They unexpectedly become separated when the “prodigy”writer is sent to England and the rest of the book explores their friendship, with its strong lesbian subtext, issues of culture and class, and youth power and choices. #Bookspin