La jeune fille et la mère is a powerful and unsettling novel which explores the life of a teenage girl in an Algeria which has not long been independent. Djamila's mother is a frustrated former independence fighter, trapped in a loveless, drudgery-filled marriage, who wants her eldest daughter to avoid an early marriage, get an education and live the life she never could. Djamila's father is a misogynist who resents having daughters. While Djamila doesn't necessarily want the marriage her father arranges for her, neither does she wholly want her mother's plan for her. Both parents project their own wants and ideals onto their daughter's body, and that makes for an uneasy but compelling read. The conclusion did read a little too abruptly to me, as if Marouane felt she had run out of space all of a sudden, but that's a relatively minor quibble—still recommended. ( )