Genre
A novel
Setting and Context
The events of the story take place in Turin in 1998. 38-year-old Olga tries to gets used to a thought that her 40-year-old husband has left her and their two children for a 15-year-old lover.
Narrator and Point of View
The story is told from the first-person point of view. The narrator is Olga.
Tone and Mood
The tone is hurt and the mood is depressing.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Olga is the protagonist. A feeling of anger is the antagonist.
Major Conflict
The major conflict is person vs. self. Olga fights with herself. She wants to be strong, to be able to move on as quickly as Mario, but she fails. It takes her a lot of time to adjust to life without Mario.
Climax
Otto’s death is the climax of the novel. The night when Otto dies is the worst, but it is also a turning point after which everything starts getting a little better. Olga still has a lot of problems and there are many conflicts that await her in the future, but she copes with them better than she does in the beginning.
Foreshadowing
One April afternoon, right after lunch, my husband announced that he wanted to leave me.
Understatement
I felt certain that it wasn’t serious. He was going through one of those moments that you read about in books, when a character reacts in an unexpectedly extreme way to the normal discontents of living.
My husband had removed his thoughts and desires from me and transferred them elsewhere.
Mario said that he had “had enough.” Two children, the dog, and the household are his ex-wife’s responsibilities now. He doesn’t even have the courage to tell her the truth. The man wants her to put an end to it. Mario clearly underestimates his ex-wife’s shock and the whole situation in general.
Allusions
The story alludes to Pietro Mica Museum.
Imagery
See the imagery section
Paradox
Do you do it even in front of the children?
The paradox is that Mario thinks that it is better for the children not to know anything. However, he forgets that they are not toddlers. They see and understand more than their parents’ give them credit for.
Parallelism
Never, ever had I truly understood him.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
I walked tensely behind Otto’s impatience, I felt the damp breath of the river, the cold of asphalt through the soles of my shoes.
