cover image The Worry Girl: Stories from a Childhood

The Worry Girl: Stories from a Childhood

Andrea Freud Loewenstein. Firebrand Books, $8.95 (164pp) ISBN 978-1-56341-016-1

In this poignant collection of related stories, protagonist Rachel's life is influenced by three major factors: her parents' foreignness (as exemplified by their German accents), her Jewishness and the fact that she, like Loewenstein ( This Place ), is a descendent of Freud.Rachel is great-granddaughter. Author--not clear. The opening section is told from the points-of-view of Rachel's grandmother and parents, but the rest of the stories are Rachel's, and she narrates them in a straightforward voice. They center on her close relationship to a mother who alternately embraces and rejects her , calling her Sorgenkind , or `` worry child. '' This conflicted relationship is set against the cruel social background of grade school and then high school, with their cliques and unbending rules of conduct. Loewenstein has a sharp memory for the fears of children; about the story of the little mermaid, for example, Rachel says, ``It was bad enough to have someone cut your tongue out under protest, but the way she opened her own mouth on purpose for the witch to do it was what terrified me.'' Rachel moves closer to finding her own voice, and to resolving questions about her lesbian sexuality, her mother and her place in the world. (May)