Point of View

The novel uses first-person narration, alternating between Fernanda and Maju. Each woman speaks in her own voice, filtering events through her preoccupations and moral frameworks. Because their worldviews are shaped by very different social positions, the shifts in perspective foreground how class inflects perception and self-justification. Through Maju’s first-person chapters, the reader inhabits the immediacy of her fear and longing. Her narration is attuned to bodily sensations, racing heartbeats, hunger, exhaustion, religious signs. The road journey feels tense because it is experienced from inside her vulnerability. Her devotion to Our Lady of Aparecida, her memories of Lauro, and her fantasies about raising Cora are not described from a distance, they are lived in real time. The first-person voice allows her to articulate the emotional logic behind an act that, from the outside, appears indefensible. It also reveals her self-doubt and her capacity for reversal...