Vacation Strangers
There is something about being on vacation at the same destination occupied over the same time by strangers who become recognizable. Maybe you only recognize them by sight riding the same rides as you or possibly you get to speak with them occasionally when eating meals in the same place. But over a period of time, vacation strangers take on a weird temporary familiarity. That strange sort of dichotomy is expressed here perfectly here through metaphor:
“I learned from Gino that the fat gray-haired woman was Nina’s mother. I learned also that the stern old man was named Corrado and wasn’t her father but Rosaria’s husband. It was like discussing a film that one has watched without fully understanding the relationship between the characters, at times not even knowing their names”
The Doll
As the original cover suggests, a doll is at the center of the narrative. This doll is not invested with sentience of any type; it is not an evil entity. It is just a doll. But, of course, as it must be, it is more than just a doll. In fact, as the narrative plays out, it is a metaphor for a great many things, a multi-representational object that sometimes the narrative explicitly explains as such:
"Why had I taken her. She guarded the love of Nina and Elena, their bond, their reciprocal passion. She was the shining testimony of perfect motherhood.”
Motherhood
The book is about many things, one can argue, but that it is fundamentally about motherhood seems beyond argument. Unquestionably, it is about a woman contemplating herself as a mother and what that means:
“How foolish to think you can tell your children about yourself before they’re at least fifty. To ask to be seen by them as a person and not as a function. To say: I am your history, you begin from me, listen to me, it could be useful to you.”
Weirdness
There is a surreal edge to the narrator’s account. Right from the opening paragraph things seem a little off and they don’t get any closer to being fully on track as the narrative progresses. This weird aspect is occasionally hit hard with some very odd moments that one wonders whether really happened or not:
“I began walking again. A violent blow struck my back, as if I had been hit with a billiard ball. I cried out in pain and surprise together, turned, breathless, and saw a pinecone tumbling into the undergrowth, big as a fist, closed.”
A Self-Centered Narrator
A first-person narrator generally tends to be an object of identification for the reader. Books are rarely narrated by out-and-out villains who admit their villainy, after all. Even the most purely evil of narrator tend to spend a good deal of the narration justifying and rationalizing their wickedness. Most readers likely won’t see Leda as evil, but they are quite likely to be put off by her. She is a woman very much wrapped up in her own self-centered interest. To suggest that she is not exactly the most sympathetic narrator in recent literary history is not going overboard:
"Ambition was still burning, fed by a young body, by an imagination full of plans, but I felt that my creative passion was cut off more and more thoroughly by the reality of dealings with the universities and the need to exploit opportunities for a possible career. I seemed to be imprisoned in my own head, without the chance to test myself, and I was frustrated.”
