When does a child cease to be a child and stand in the isolation of an individual? When do parents cease being parents and become unknown human beings? These are the questions, fraught with deeply rooted emotional complications, that Madeleine L'Engle explores in her new novel, "Camilla Dickinson."

Camilla, herself, fifteen years old, is the narrator of the story. It is through her eyes, her feelings, her fears and her bewilderment that the sensitive, fragile texture of a girl's coming of age takes form and pattern….

Perceptively, with a tender understanding of the vulnerability of a growing girl lost in the confusion of intuitive but formless knowledge, Miss L'Engle portrays the shock with which Camilla discovers that Jacques Nissen, a frequent caller at the Dickinson home, is her mother's lover….

Telling her story through Camilla, Miss L'Engle succeeds admirably in portraying the painful awakening of a finely wrought adolescent. She is less successful in portraying some of the adults in the story. But in the realm of troubled, questing youth, Miss L'Engle has the sensitive touch of one whose emotional remembrance has the clarity of the living moment.