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Carlino is an insufferable young teenager who is convinced that his father is really his stepfather. Surely he is the son of one of his mother's former lovers, a much more glamorous character. The only person in the family he feels much connection to is his older sister, and she has just gotten married. When his parents send him to a Catholic boarding school and he becomes the headmaster's favorite whipping-boy, he runs away to his sister's home. However, the kind of bickering he sees between his sister and her new husband is so distasteful that he finds boarding school, for all its drawbacks, is much more attractive. On his Christmas break he learns that his mother's old flame was sterile, and that his father really was his father. This is revealed at the same time that his sister reveals she is divorcing her new husband as they have both found new lovers.