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Even among conservatories, it is exceptional, with a wide age range — from preadolescence to post-baccalaureate adulthood — and a personalized approach, of schedules and repertoire, for musicians who live almost entirely for their art.

"It seems like wherever you had your developmental life preadolescence and adolescence tends to be where your thermostat is tuned."

"It seems like wherever you had your developmental life preadolescence and adolescence tends to be where your thermostat is tuned. I think there's very complex genetics that play into that and where you feel good."

Sex with men, even then, had always been part of my life, forming an unbroken arc from preadolescence into adulthood.

Perspectives of preadolescence — before the skeptical, angsty, socially corruptible teenage years set in — are fairly rare in adult literary fiction, which is maybe why they tend to be so indelible: Think of Scout Finch’s observations of racial prejudice in the Deep South in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” or of bright, 6-year-old Maisie Farange haplessly navigating her narcissistic parents’ acrimonious divorce in Henry James’s “What Maisie Knew.”