Geral(dine)’s Reviews > Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay > Status Update

💬 Lilas so compelling when she talks being traumatized by motherhood

📚233
"This life of another, she said, clings to you in the womb first and then, when it finally comes out, it takes you prisoner, keeps you on a leash, you're no longer your own master.(...)It's as if you fabricated your very own torture(...)I realized then that she wasn't capable of thinking she was her self and I was my self(...)"

💬 HMM..Gigliola's relationship, Alfonsos reveal, Elena's efforts backfiring etc etc - we had the context clues, I'd rather it wasn't served on a platter like this. Trying to bring myself to see it as a natural progression and demystification: They're older, got words to name feelings by now and it's still wonderfully written.. but I prefer the metaphors, the "Show" (Book 1+2) to the "tell" and conclusions.

📚 Quote Page 210 (Meeting Alfonso)
"(...) you I love. With her that always seemed impossible. There was something tremendous about her that made me want to go down on my knees and confess my most secret thoughts."
I said ironically: "Great, an almost religious experience."
He remained serious: "No, only an admission of inferiority. (...)"

📚 Quote Page 206 (Gigliola)
"Do you think I exist? Look at me, in your view do I exist? She hit her full breasts with her open hand, but she did it as if to demonstrate physically that the hand went right through her, that her body, because of Michele, wasn't there. He had taken everything of her, immediately, when she was almost a child."

💬 by the 🌈-by... if Elena is marrying Pietro....I'll take his mother....

📚 Quote Page 174
"Lila proceeded to talk generally about her sexuality. It was a subject completely new for us. The coarse language of the environment we came from was useful for attack or self-defense, but, precisely because it was the language of violence, it hindered, rather than encouraged, intimate confidences."

💬 imagines herself as a knight and the circumstances (c) men (which Lila is fighting) as beasts but I'm in the wrong when I put my rainbow colored glasses on for a second yea yea

📚 Page 172
"I feel like the knight in an ancient romance (...) he meets a ragged, starving herdsman, who, never leaving his pasture, subdued and controls horrible beasts with his bare hands, and with prodigious courage."

💬 Enzo feels like the only man you can wholeheartedly trust in this whole series (will I be betrayed yet again?) Pietro seems fine, sweet even, but I've learned my lesson... he hasn't proven himself in a difficult situation yet (the most he ever does is be generous, so I'm staying alert!)

💬 frustrated alongside Lila the whole visit..

📚 Page 143+144
"You professors insist so much on education because that's how you earn a living, but studying is of no use, it doesn't even improve you — in fact it makes you even more wicked."
"Has Elena become more wicked?"
"No, not her."
"Why not?"
Lila stuck the wool cap on her son's head. "We made a pact when we were children: I'm the wicked one."

💬 didn't expect my reading enjoyment to spike so much w/ Lilas return (I never loved Elena less), but it's nice in a way, to understand how for Elena the world is *more* with Lila in it

📚 Page 135
"(...) she was afraid of being fired, she was afraid of losing a salary that, even though it was miserable, allowed her to love Enzo without considering him fundamental to her survival and that of Gennaro."

💬 want more of Lila at the revolutionaries meet-ups!):

📚 Quote Page 123
"She left in a daze, with the impression of having exposed herself too fully to people who, yes, were good-hearted but who, even if they understood it in the abstract, in the concrete couldn't understand a thing. (...) I know what a comfortable life full of good intentions means, you can't even imagine what real misery is."