“She wanted to vanish; she wanted every one of her cells to disappear, nothing of her ever to be found.”

The sixty-six-year-old Lila referred to in the Prologue seeks some way to disappear off the face of the planet. Her urge to disappear creates a sense of mystery and suspense. 

“We’ll see who wins this time, I said to myself. I turned on my computer and began to write—all the details of our story, everything that still remained in my memory.” 

This excerpt introduces the lifelong competition between Elena and Lila: when one of them wins, the other will lose. However, the aging Elena’s real battle may be against memory. Some things she will surely forget. 

“Nu and Tina weren’t happy. The terrors that we tasted every day were theirs. We didn’t trust the light on the stones, on the buildings, on the scrubland beyond the neighborhood, of the people inside and outside their houses. We imagined dark corners, the feelings repressed but always close to exploding.” 

Elena and Lila project their own fear and suspicion of the neighborhood onto their dolls. Even their childhood games offer no escape from the harsh reality of an impoverished neighborhood, full of violence and intrigue.