Content Warning: This section references misogyny and violence against women.

“1. You have a Black Madonna here, so you will know how to love this child

almost as much as I do. Please call her Montserrat.

2. Wait for me.”

The note left with Montserrat as a baby when she was abandoned at the abbey—a depiction of the real Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey in Catalonia, Spain—sets up Montserrat’s search for identity. The yet unidentified mother leaves only this note and a key, which serves as the inciting incident for the story and sets the tone for the entire book.

“Montse saw that the Señora sometimes grew short of breath though she’d

hardly stirred. A consequence of snatching images out of the air—the air took something back.”

Montserrat admires the deep, artistic passion of Lucy. Montserrat’s fascination with Lucy is juxtaposed with Lucy’s own fascination with her art—the breathless admiration of something that seems to have come from beyond. The idea of the air “taking something back” references the idea that artists get their inspiration from an unknown spiritual source, but it frames this as a two-way street; these reversals in the respective positions of artist, art, and spectator/reader occur throughout the collection.

“According to Stendhal it takes about a year and a month to fall in love, all

being well. Maybe we fell faster because all was not well with us[.]”

Marie-Henri Beyle, known under the pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Isidoro and Aurelie share a love of books and reading together, and Stendhal’s quote represents the urgency of their relationship. Aurelie’s recognition of their lack of time foreshadows the tragedy that is to befall them.