Or perhaps I did both, and that’s the problem — that I lead a life in opposition to itself.
-- Narrator (Prologue)

Importance: Alice’s question to herself as she looks back on her life is one that is central to the novel. She examines her life to look for signs of the beginnings of the duplicity with which she suspects she has lived her life.

Yet this was the place, smelling of cigarette smoke and Shalimar perfume, that seemed to me a passageway to adventure, the lobby of adulthood. In my grandmother’s lair, I sensed the experiences and passions of all the people whose lives were depicted in the novels she read.
-- Narrator (Part 1)

Importance: Alice describes the room in which her grandmother inhabited at Alice’s childhood home. She thought of the room as being a fanciful place, one inspired by the books Emilie had read. Notice the smells that Alice connects with her...