there was something unbearable in the things, in the people, in the buildings, in the streets that, only if you reinvented it all, as in a game, became acceptable. the essential, however, was to know how to play, and she and i, only she and i, knew how to do it.

ah, girlhood!! i thought this was wildly depressing and beautiful and kind of boring too, in the way life is all those things. the second person narration in the scene where lenu helps lila bathe before her wedding and thinks the only way to get past this pain would be to have her boyfriend fuck her at the exact same time as lila will be fucking her new husband ??? sent me reeling. devastating