The Lying Life of Adults

“Maybe at that moment something in my body broke, maybe that’s where I should locate the end of my childhood. I felt as if I were a container of granules that were imperceptibly leaking out of me through a tiny crack.” 

This quote comes from Giovanna, at the moment she perceives that her mother is patronizing her. Giovanna previously marked her coming of age with getting her period, her breast size increasing, and other physical changes. Here, Giovanna defines her “growth” with a symbolic break, her entry into adolescence is the moment her mother lies to her for the first time.

“Vittoria seemed to me to have a beauty so unbearable that to consider her ugly became a necessity.” 

Giovanna wants to see her aunt to determine if they look alike. When she thinks her aunt is beautiful, Giovanna is afraid because her aunt symbolizes evil, meaning Giovanna is aligning herself more and more with someone she and her parents perceive as corruption incarnate. 

“Your father erases everything that might be better than him, […] He can become by instinct a person you can no longer live without.” 

Aunt Vittoria says this of her brother Andrea. The quote continues the theme of mythic good and evil in the narrative. Giovanna thinks her father is refined and can do no wrong, yet she must now grapple with him possibly being instinctually deceitful. Once she affirms this, she spends the rest of the novel trying to break free from what she considers his charm or bewitchment.