By nature sensitive, introspective, and emotional, this intense and gifted young girl pours out [in Linotte: The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin 1914–1920] the manic-depressive roller-coastering of adolescence in her daily tryst with her one friend, her diary. Arriving in an unfamiliar country, abandoned by the father whose love she craves, she tosses her crystalline, childlike impressions into a whirlpool of blossoming adulthood….

This amazingly precocious diary offers clearsighted evaluations of herself, already the analyst of dreams and feelings we encounter in her adult journals….

It's also a portrait of the developing young writer. She justifies the attraction her journal has: it's not only "unbounded egotism," she remarks perceptively, but a strainer, serving her love of truth and "a way of acting as my own teacher."…

[The volume's] special charm lies in the heartfelt outpourings of the girl-to-woman experiences of this sensitive soul. On the threshold of adulthood...