This novel is based on actual events, with the story of a woman abused by her father since childhood. Her husband continued the violence against her.
Her father, who stole flowers from cemeteries and made her sell them in nightclubs, literally buried her in graves either to punish her or to give in to his appetites.
A first-person narration - a truly shocking testimony, unfortunately very topical in Greece, where in the last year many incidents of sexual abuse of young girls have come to light, and hundreds of women have been victims of violence, culminating in a series of femicides and rapes.
At the same time, the author manages with an excellent command of the language, to give us the other side of the problem as well: How an abused man can become a perpetrator himself, accumulating hatred as he becomes alienated from society, even from his own children.
The heroin says:
“...I want to put everyone who’s ever hurt me around in a room. Silence them and start talking. Better yet, I shouldn’t talk, but let a book do the talking for me. A book about all the bad things they've done to me…”
A “hard” book, full of truths.
And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.
As we count up the memories from one journey, we head off on another. Remembering those who went ahead. Remembering those who will follow after. And someday, we will meet all those people again, out beyond the horizon.
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.
I would have liked to cry: the make-up stopped me, it looked just right, with the cracks, with the places where it was beginning to flake off, tears would have ruined all that. I could cry later, if I still felt like it.
Our destiny is what we want it to be, not what has been carved in stone. It's our life, not someone else's dream.
