There are some great scenes in this novel: when the two girls throw each other's dolls into some kind of gutter [?} and go down to try to retrieve them, then accuse don Achille of taking them... When they skip school to try to find the ocean: they go through a tunnel into another neighborhood, a place which is menacing, but in exactly the same way their own neighborhood is menacing. They walk for hours, haven't planned for the need to eat or drink water. The sky darkens and it begins to rain copiously. Lila gives up, and they run back home. Elena gets a beating at home, but Lila's parents don't even notice that anything is amiss. There's another scene in which the police come to arrest someone. This is supposed to be the most terrifying scene ever, but in this case it doesn't quite come off. Another weird description of Lila's state of mental alienation.
What's great here is that Lila is not necessarily extraordinary in herself, but she is almost superhuman in the eyes of the narrator, but at the same time eerily vulnerable. The novel narrated from the point of view of Lila / Lina would not be as compelling, and Elena's account of her life is not quite as compelling either. It is not without interest, but we identity not with her per se, but we share her obsession with her genius friend.
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