This is a coming-of-age book that deals with the complexity of love and familial problems. If I were to describe Cécile’s character I would use the word fragile. She seems to have no understanding of who she is and what she wants. One moment she is in love with Cyril, the next she views their relationship as just a series of sensations. Anne criticizes this, “your idea of love is rather primitive. Love is not a series of sensations, each one independent of the others” (pg 29). Her opinions of Anne also fluctuate between adoration and hatred, one moment she is confident that she despises her and wants her gone, the next she wants to undo all her plans to get rid of her. 

I am not sure that I even liked Cecile. I can understand her mixed feelings about Anne and her father’s engagement and the frustrations she felt towards them, but once she began scheming to end their engagement, I started to lose some of my sympathy for her. Her regret for it after the fact was almost satisfying, she deserved to feel guilty and have consequences for her actions. “For the first time I realized I had hurt a living, sensitive creature, not just a personality” (pg 121) is an important reflection made by Cecile, I am glad she felt regretful about her actions. The way she treated Cyril was also unsatisfying to me, her descriptions of Cyril and their relationship made me root for him, so her inconsistent behavior towards him was frustrating. However, her disinterest in his proposal made sense to me and was an important reminder to me that she is only 16 and doesn’t know who she is and to not be too critical of her as she figures out what she wants.

I would also describe Cecile as childish, self-interested, and manipulative. These qualities, specifically her childishness, make sense given the lack of parental guidance in her life. Her father has never provided a healthy image of love or nurtured a stable environment for learning. When she begins plotting to split up her father and Anne, she revealed her manipulative intentions; “I had sized up Elsa, found her weak spot, and carefully aimed my word” (pg 71) and “I had known the intense pleasure of analyzing another person, manipulating that person toward my own ends” (pg 71). These lines and her overall selfish nature are likely the results of her chaotic and unstable upbringing. 

Her relationship with her father was immediately suspicious, implicitly suggesting a father-daughter romantic relationship. As the story went on there were a couple lines that continued to suggest this that was a little bit disturbing such as: “just then my father came out of the water. He was broad and muscular and I thought he looked wonderful” (pg 78). The extent to which she works to break up Raymond and Anne also suggests an element of jealousy; jealous she is no longer the main woman in her father’s life, but perhaps also a sense of romantic jealousy, perhaps she craves what Raymond gives to Anne romantically. Her conflicting emotions about Anne are also significant; Cecile admires Anne yet also despises her, to me this suggests jealousy, but also that she craves the stability and parental support Anne could give her but doesn’t know how to receive it. 

Do you think the author intends for us to like Cecile? Did you like her? And what did you make of her and her father’s relationship?