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The Book
The family tree
- Olga married Augusto
- The father of Ilaria is Ernesto.
- Ilaria knew Ernesto, but not as her father.
- She got to know a man on a trip to Turkey.
- This "somebody" is the father of Ilaria's daughter.
- The "Granddaughter" never met her father, and her mother died when
she was young.
What the three main characters have in common...
1st: They had to deal with death when they were young.
Olga's dog died when she was little and her father told her that she
was guilty.
Ilaria lost her father Augusto when she was 13. Her real father
Ernesto died when she was about 33.
The granddaughter lost her mother, Ilaria, when she was a little
girl and so she had to grow up with her grandmother.
2nd: There were many conflicts between mother and daughter.
When Olga was young there were many conflicts with her mother. Her
mother was a perfectionist and Olga had to follow her advice. She
wanted that her daughter shouldn't have such problems. So she did
not set up any rules and she did not contradict Ilaria. When Ilaria
was 13 her father died, and from that day on she also had many
conflicts with Olga.
When Ilaria died Olga had to raise up her granddaughter. As the
puberty began the conflicts increased, too. Olga described it like
this:
"If I say, that a gap has been naturally formed between us, I'm just
meaning this. At the time when your tank has begun to form itself,
mine was already broken."
3rd: Another thing is that Ilaria and her daughter both left Olga to
study in another country.
All in all one can say that there are some things common in their
lives. But each person lives his/her own life and goes his/her own
way.
Personal report about Olga
She is the main person in this book. Her mother married at the age
of 16 and got a baby (Olga) with 17. It was neither a love-match nor
a marriage she was forced into. She rather forced herself to do so
because she was a rich Jewish woman and wanted to get noble. Her
father was a baron and crazy about music. Her parents lived in
revenge and distrust against each other. She disliked her mother
since she was seven years old because her mother was a real
perfectionist. She was very good at school and very clever and she
wanted to study at a university but after she passed the high school
exams her father didn’t want her to go on like this. Because of her
cleverness boys didn’t want to go out with her till she met Augusto,
a workmate of her father. He seemed to be very interested in her but
after they had married their relationship got more and more boring.
After a short time and after her mother died she urgently wished to
get a baby but Augusto didn’t agree. He sent her to a health resort
to get her away from this idea. At this health resort she met
Ernesto, a doctor, and they fell in love with each other. When she
came home after the second time she was pregnant, but she made clear
that Augusto wouldn’t notice anything. At the 6th month of her
pregnancy her father died. After she had become a mother she was
very happy, but this happiness only lasted for a short time, until
Ernesto died. Because of this she wasn’t able to take care of her
daughter Ilaria any longer and a childminder had to do it for her.
When Augusto died a few years later he told Olga that Ilaria’s hands
weren’t the same as the ones of everybody else in this family. He
knew the secret and kept it over 17 years.
The daughter
Ilaria’s daughter is another main person in the novel. The diary
written by Olga is meant for her. We do not get to know the
daughter’s name during the course of the action. The girl lost her
mother when she was very young (maybe 2 or 3 years old) . She was
born in 1976 and has no brothers and sisters. Her mother died
because of a car accident when she was 33 years old. So the
gandmother had to raise up Ilaria’s daughter. The young girl had no
father because her mother Ilaria , was pregnant when she returned
from a journey to Turkey.
The grandmother and her granddaughter have a strong and loving
relationship but during the girl’s puberty a certain distance grows
between them. The granddaughter develops into a cynical and
self-loving person. In the past she was rather a sensible and
cheerful child.
She attends the Highschool and passes the A-Levels. She wants to
study and so she leaves her grandmother in September 1992 to study
at an American university for one year. And because she is so far
away her grandmother starts to write the diary to express her
feelings to her and apologize for her own mistakes and her
Summary: Our personal opinion
PRO:
In our opinion the novel is a great, emotionally touching story
about the life of an old woman, who wants to teach her granddaughter
what she has learned in her life. The novel is written with a lot of
sad and sentimental moments. But nonetheless the old grandmother’s
story seems to be very realistic. We liked the way, the grandmother
wrote letters to her granddaughter, because they were filled with
love. It is amazing, how deeply one person can love another person.
CONTRA:
On the other hand, we think that the whole story has no real tension.
The letters are emotional, but there is no climax. The novel is
written in one schema, which doesn’t change at any page in the book.
The grandmother writes and writes and writes to her lovely
granddaughter, but she does not answer. The open ending of the novel
finishes the story with a disappointing end. There is no clearing:
Does the granddaughter answer the letters? And how would she react
if she read the letters?
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