Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Only Girl in the World | 2014 | Maude Julien | Buy |
The Only Girl in the World tells the story of Maude Julien’s childhood on a secluded estate in northern France, where her father Louis Didier had designed a life of near-total isolation. Convinced he could engineer a superior human being, he removed her from ordinary contact with the outside world and put her through regimens meant to toughen her beyond normal limits: locking her in the cellar, requiring her to sleep with rats, forcing her to withstand extreme cold.
The book does not read as a revenge account. Julien writes with attention to detail and psychological nuance, describing how her father’s world functioned, what her mother’s role was, and how she found small acts of resistance within an almost entirely controlled environment. The family’s setting, with its grey skies and crumbling manor, gives the memoir a bleak atmosphere that suits the subject.
It was first published in France in 2014 and drew comparisons to other true accounts of closed and abusive family systems. Readers interested in real accounts of psychological manipulation and survival will find it a measured and unsettling read.