这本书的签名本这周到了，订孩子看的一些探险故事书的时候，在书店网站首页上看到了新书广告就一起下单了。
昨天晚上，本来是睡前想随手翻几下而已，结果一看就看到凌晨三点，看完了。
今天傍晚，孩子看到书放在沙发旁边，问，Was it a good one? 我只答了一句，It's legit。收起书，放到我自己的书架上。
年幼的她已经很明显有太多地方像书中的一个角色Brodie，而这恰恰是我最不喜欢的角色。不想给她看这本书，至少现在不行。
她这年纪，是不可能体会和理解这书的深意。
这本书青少年（少女）和女生家长都合适读的，这里就不写剧透了。因为这本书主要是刻画一个亚洲家庭的奖学金女孩进入私立女校10年级的生活，对教育有启发意义，所以发在中学教育版。
转载smh的简短报道
In Laurinda, Alice Pung tells an involving, original story that captures the drama and pain of school life today, as well as revealing much about the choices of young women.
原书第一章节选
When my dad dropped us off at the front gate, the first things I saw were the rose garden spreading out on either side of the main driveway and the enormous sign in iron cursive letters spelling out LAURINDA. No “Ladies College” after it, of course; the name was meant to speak for itself. Then there was the main building: four sections of sandstone brick and the giant cream tower in the centre. This place is giving us the finger! you squawked when you first saw it, Linh.
I thought to myself that in a black and white photograph, it could be mistaken for the main house of a plantation in the deep south of America. I could imagine young ladies in white gloves with lace slingshots, lying in wait to kill a mockingbird or two. It was beautiful, but as it was guarded by a gate and set against the enormous lawn, the beauty snuck up on you, like a femme fatale with a rock.
We could make fun of it because we knew we’d never enter the school itself, only the gym, a massive windowless box that looked like a giant’s shipping container. There was an A4 sign stuck to the door: YEAR TEN SCHOLARSHIP EXAMS THIS WAY. Rows of plastic chairs and tables had been set up, with numbers sticky-taped down the side. It was morgue-cold in there, as though we were going to be strapped into those seats and have our minds dissected in some awful autopsy.
There were over three hundred students in the room but only two of us would make it through this elimination round: a boy for Auburn Academy and a girl for Laurinda. This was the first time Laurinda and Auburn had offered “Equal Access” scholarships, which were supposed to go to kids with parents the school considered povvo.
That morning, all the parents were begging the deities, white-knuckled with want, for their kid to be the one who made it through. There were two types, I noticed: the ear-pullers, who drove off immediately after giving their kids a serious stare and a punishing pointed finger, and the bum-wipers, who stayed as long as they could, until they were kicked out because the exam was about to begin.
It was good to see some familiar faces from Christ Our Saviour. Tully was there, and Yvonne and Ivy. They were trying out because they hadn’t made it into Hoadley Girls State Selective School and their parents were giving them a rough time at home. And you, of course, Linh.
I felt sorry for Tully. The way her mother was dragging her to the gym by the elbow, it was as if she was heading for the firing squad. “Your cousin Stephanie got into Hoadley seven years ago,” we overheard Mrs Cho muttering, “and there is no way that you could be dumber than Stephanie.”
Now Stephanie was an accountant who sat on her bum churning through numbers all day instead of standing in a factory pulling out chicken gizzards. My parents had taken me to visit her when I was seven. I stared and stared at the badges on her red woollen jacket and her chequered skirt with a big metal pin through it. “She had to take a test to get into the school,” my father told me as he drove us home that evening. “She has a good future ahead of her.”
As a kid, I wasn’t forced to think about The Future much, but I knew I wanted to be dressed like Stephanie in a royal outfit that magically seemed to make adults take you seriously and ask you quiet and sincere questions and listen to your answers. None of that “Wah, what a pretty girl you are!” which seemed to be the only way adult strangers behaved towards me back then.
As I walked to my place in the gym, I saw Tully hunched over the desk ahead of me, her back a hard cashew curve and her fingers at her temples. I thought of all those afternoons when she couldn’t hang out or even do homework with us because she was being whisked away to some tutoring program or other.
When the exam began, the gym fell so quiet that I could hear myself blink. It must have been like this all the time for Tully, I mused, her whole life one exam after another in whitewalled tutoring centres run by dour former maths teachers or engineers whose qualifications were not recognised here. She would be used to this silence.
When it was over, we walked with Tully, Ivy and Yvonne to catch the bus home. Ivy and Yvonne had been such close friends since Year Seven that they had identical haircuts. They commiserated with each other when their parents made them find after-school work at the local Kumon tutoring centre and Kmart, and they planned to run away together when they turned twenty, before their parents could send them back to Vietnam/Malta to get cheap eyelid surgery/nose jobs and/or husbands.
As we walked, we wah’ed over houses with roofs like red bonnets on top of white faces with unblinking bay-window eyes, fanned by decades-old London plane trees. Ivy and Yvonne skipped down the sidewalk, playing the old game of avoiding the cracks in case we broke our mothers’ backs.
Tully had her fingertips in her jeans pockets; occasionally she would pull out a soggy tissue and wipe her nose. The girl was practically viral.
I could hear Ivy bellowing down the quiet street that Yvonne had stepped on a crack.
“I did not, bitch!” Yvonne screeched back. I noticed the airy curtains of a house ripple.
“Be quiet, youse!” you said. “People are watching us.”
“Let them watch!” yelled Ivy in glee.
“We probably interrupted their eleven o’clock croissant.”
有几个值得思考的地方：
民族/文化冲突下的自我认知
家庭背景（说得直接点：阶级）的定位和自处
朋友的选择
个人未来发展的设想
不仅是孩子，父母该怎么做
评论
男生家长也来读读
评论
嘿嘿，女生事多，我原以为高中男生简单一些，直到以前的高中同学设立了微信群，主要都是一些男生，看他们讨论以前的自己班的隔壁班的同学和老师等等种种细节，我才发现，原来彼时他们的内心世界也是那么敏感和复杂啊。
评论
过段时间才有空看。不知楼主是否可以分享一下书中角色Brodie的特点吗？因为你说不喜欢，很想知道为什么。
评论
这几天为了消遣，看了湖南卫视的 《一年级》。发觉小女生都相似，大都成熟，听话。小男孩就情况层出不穷，但是还是小男孩抢我的眼球，而且还是特调皮的那几个
还有，发觉bossy的孩子，小朋友都不喜欢。
评论
看一下作者对Brodie的开场描写
Brodie was a tall dark-haired girl who didn't say much.but is was an unsettling silence. She had dark eyes that were neither green nor grey.They seemed to absorb rather than relect your image of you if you looked into them. I had the feeling that there were things beneath the surface waiting to float up when they stopped swimming. I realised then that I had seen Brodie before:she was the prefect who had marched into the auditorium bearing the school banner.
再来看一段，马上紧挨着的描述
......
Although most girls these days aimed to go to university, not to sit at home embroidering linen for their glory boxes, the things that mattered then--attractiveness,wealth,personality--still mattered in determining your Cabinet position.Over time the term had evolved to name the unspoken hierarchy at Laurinda: a trio of girls so powerful they collectively known as "the Cabinet".It seemed that the Cabinet had always existd,although its members constantly changed,morphing into new faces every few years.They were the ones responsible for keeping the elusive"Laurinda spirit"alive.This year it was Amber,Chelsea, and Brodie.
.......
Unlike Tully,Brodie did not seem assailed by self-doubt over her intelligence, or by the sleepless fear that her future would be determined by her performance in exams. The difference was that Tully wanted so desperately to be in, whereas Brodie was already in.She had been in since she was in kinder-garten, and she was determined to keep others out.
......
"Oh my God, that was sooo hard,"Brodie exclaimed after a maths test one afternoon.
" I know,hey?" said Chelsea,"That last page was crazy scary."
Brodie tuned to the girl behind her，”Did you find it difficult,Nicola？“
"Not really,"replied Nicola,flattered to be asked," I've been studying really hard for it for a week."
"You mean you didn't find it very difficult?" asked Brodie."Wow, Nicola. Wow, Everyone found the last page impossible. I thought there were some trick questions in there. In fact,I'm sure there were."
Nicola's face crumpled."What do you mean?"
"You know."
"No, I don't."
"Oh,then don't worry about it.You must have aced the test! You are a maths genius,Nicola."
And with that they walked away, leaving poor Nocola to fret for days until the results came back.
思想成熟 城府深的孩子以为她的能力可以handle很多复杂的情况，但实际并不能。
无疑，Brodie是书中所有出现的人物（包括书中第一女主角）中最强的，成功，赞誉，权力，会很快让人迷失。一个人要有非常强烈自省的意识，才会长久生存下去。
这是一个很难把握的度，也不好教育。
我自己的孩子特别像Brodie，她有很多手段可以达到她的目的，在各方面都超越她的年龄。不像Brodie的冷，我的孩子很能在人群中营造一种快乐的氛围，但我内心知道，她nice，but distant。她缺了最重要的一个技能，就是“let go”。坚持，毅力，这些其实都容易，很容易就能得到她想得到的东西，很容易就显现出优秀，但最难的是放下。如果她能放下，就是一个性格完好的人，如果不能放下，或许会在人生道路中受到很大挫折，而挫折可能是非常致命的，比如感情。
孩子必须面对不同的对手，体验不同的环境，经历过挫折，懂得了取舍，才会成长。正如书里最后写的，You are not truly good until you are tested.
评论
在网站买的？书名是？
评论
http://www.booktopia.com.au/laur ... d9781863956925.html
评论
Maybe I am old fashioned but I don't like her style of writing. It appears to me tedious and overly descriptive. Maybe her books appeal to teenagers but I won't know - my kids are still young (2, 6) so I haven't been exposed to many teen books yet.
评论
谢谢分享。以一个旁观者的眼光看，孩子的这个特点一方面是天生的，另一方面也可能来自后天的环境。我觉得一个原因可能是，孩子的成长中没有得到完全的接纳，一定要很优秀才能被家人，朋友，老师...喜爱，才能自己接纳自己。
评论
谢谢分享
评论
总于看完了。
觉得Interesting的是主角形容自己的父母，，尤其是她问那每天在车房缝纫的母亲：“Don't you get sad?""Being inside this dark garage all day, doing exactly the same thing every day?"
还有主角去被MrsLeslie 邀请去Amber 家的情形& Rice Paper Roll Making with Amber, Chelsea & Brodie 的母亲。
还有Brodie去主角家的情形（Catching a taxi, using her mobile phone there).
Suddenly there was a splashing sound from our kitchen, then an enoormous thump which shook the floor of our house.
"What was that?"
"Mum just killed a fish."
值得一看。
谢谢Wyyy & Lavender & 冬版 分分鼓励 ！
评论
书帖子被翻出来啦
这本书很多不足中最大的不足就是 写早恋的部分太少啦 不够juicy！
评论
感谢您的分享，期待PART2 LUCY & RICHARD的童话故事。
评论
女校还早恋，白去了
评论
女校的邻居就是男校阿 没有早恋桥段 人生不完整阿！
澳洲中文论坛热点
- 悉尼部份城铁将封闭一年，华人区受影响！只能乘巴士（组图）
- 据《逐日电讯报》报导，从明年年中开始，因为从Bankstown和Sydenham的城铁将因Metro South West革新名目而
- 联邦政客们具有多少房产？
- 据本月早些时分报导，绿党副首领、参议员Mehreen Faruqi已获准在Port Macquarie联系其房产并建造三栋投资联