Little Red Horses

I've just started reading this book left behind by my grandfather. As I've read Alice Hoffman's "white horses", and like the song "winter" by Tori Amos, the title made me curious. My Penguin edition is yellow, indicating "psychological novels, essays etc." The book is well written in an elegant and rich language, with warmth, humor and amazingly modern understanding of humans and their behavior. I was puled into it after only a few pages, and after three chapters there has been no dull moments so far. The descriptions of people, places and events are so colorful that I first suspected I'd seen this as a film. Strange it isn't made into one. Sometime in the early 1900's, set in an upper class environment. This Is a story about a stoic and intelligent girl who loses her mother at the age of eleven, makes poetry as therapy and becomes famous, spoiled and cherished for it. After traveling all over Europe with her mother, she is growing up in an esoteric new age environment in the US. She has been brought up to the highest standards of behavior, suiting a prices, and is in this way not surpassed by any Parisian women. She knows at least three languages and her favorite subject is mythology. Her English father, captain and a strict protestant, takes her home to England and aims, together with his sister, to fix the damaged done by these nonsencical people, and turn her into a normal happy romping girl. The story is not so black and white as it could have been, if it wasn't for the deeper insight of the author, and her descriptions and explanations of what is going on in the characters minds, Suitable for ages from eleven and up. Jonas Eggen