Maude Julien narrates her harrowing coming-of-age tale in The Only Girl in the World, pulling her readers into the traumatic and disturbing world her father created for her in order to turn her into a “superhuman.” Julien’s father believed that the more he “trained” her, the better her chances would be to unflinchingly endure any torture or pain she might be subjected to, as well as survive any looming apocalypse that might befall her. From the moment she could understand speech, her father’s sole ambition was drilled into her head so that she would never forget what her purpose in life really was: to never disappoint him in his quest to make her invincible.

In 1936, 34-year-old Louis Didier struck a bargain with a poor miner from a small town with a brood of children. Monsieur Didier asked that the man give him guardianship of his six-year-old daughter Jeanine, promising that Jeanine would never want for anything and would be educated in the best schools Europe had to offer — on condition that the girl would never see her family again and would have no contact with them. Didier was at this point a wealthy businessman, a Freemason to boot. The miner already had too many mouths to feed and readily gave his permission. Thus, little Jeanine left the only world she had known and was raised by Didier, who kept his word to the miner and made sure she received an excellent education. Once Jeanine became of age, Didier married her.

When Jeanine turned 28, Didier decided it was time that she gave him “a daughter as blonde as she was.” Once the blonde little girl was born, he commanded Jeanine to take charge of the child’s education. Jeanine was a means to an end, a vessel through which Didier would get the daughter he had always planned on turning into a “super being”, who would be educated by her mother and trained by her father. When Julien turned three, Didier sold his properties and the family moved to an isolated house away from the “polluting influences of the outside world” where Didier took charge of Julien’s training so that she would not only be educated well, but would also be able to survive concentration camps, torture and severe interrogation techniques.

Maude Julien’s engaging and equally disturbing memoir is an attempt to come to terms with her traumatic past

For the next decade, the little girl was put through a series of tests and trainings that were not just cruel and sadistic in nature, but were designed to devoid her of all discernible emotion. She was made to hold an electrified fence without wincing, had to sit completely still in a dark, rat-infested cellar all night with bells sewn on to her jacket so that her mother would know if she moved and had to endure her pets being tortured. Monsieur Didier believed that once Julien learned to control every possible human emotion she was capable of feeling, she could endure anything that the world threw at her.

According to Julien, her mother was stricter about her daily regimen than her father was. Since Jeanine was responsible for making sure that Julien completed all of her set tasks — especially once her father started getting older and sicker — she kept Julien under the harshest of observations and did not fail to punish or report her daughter if she felt she could save herself from Monsieur Didier’s criticism. Having been under Monsieur Didier’s control all her life, Jeanine was a classic example of someone affected by Stockholm syndrome. All she had ever known was what her guardian-turned-husband had ingrained into her. Julien observed how her mother would be “extremely nervous” when her father was around: “what she dread[ed] more than anything [was] looking like a bad, weak or incompetent teacher”, because Julien’s training was Jeanine’s only duty. It was why Didier had shown any interest in her and she never let Julien forget it.

A host of sinister noises, little animals moving around in the dark, scurrying, running, stopping, rummaging and scuttling off again. I’m screaming inside, but no sound comes out because my lips are clamped shut and quivering. My father told me that if I open my mouth, mice or even rats will sense it and will climb up me, get into my mouth and eat me from the inside. He’s seen several people die like that in cellars when he was taking shelter from air raids in World War I. I worry that the mice might be able to get in through my ears. But if I cover them with my hands I won’t hear anything, I’ll be blind and deaf. — Excerpt from the book

Today, a 60-year-old Julien is a successful psychotherapist, specialising in the treatment of trauma, phobias and mind control. Her life and her profession have been shaped as a direct result of her upbringing, but not at all in the ways that Didier had imagined. According to an interview published in The Guardian, Julien’s “manner is precise but warm” and her bungalow exudes a hope and cheerfulness that defies the very logic of the upbringing she recieved from her parents. The ever-present hope and resilience in Julien’s heart, the unexpected help and compassion of some strangers and the unconditional love she felt for, and received from her pets, kept her going until she could escape the confines of her prison and start working on her healing.

Julien’s mother, however, was not as lucky — although she had occasionally “experienced longings of rebellion, [she] didn’t dare oppose her ‘protector’.” As an involuntary member of Monsieur Didier’s cult, Jeanine remains, to this day, Didier’s victim, completely within his control even years after his death. Julien dedicates her memoir to her mother, the “first victim of the Ogre”, in the hopes that this can be a small start towards bridging the vast gap between them and let them finally come to terms with the traumatic past they both experienced together and individually.

The reviewer is a finance support specialist at Yale University

The Only Girl in the World: A Memoir
By Maud Julien, Adriana Hunter
Little, Brown and Company, US
ISBN: 978-0316466622
288pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 29th, 2018