Content Warning: This section discusses wartime violence, the Holocaust and antisemitism, and death.

“If I’d known what was coming that morning, I’d have done things differently. I certainly wouldn’t have fought with my mother.”

The opening lines of the text establish the events that follow as a flashback, with Lidia remembering the events years later. Her thoughts introduce the novel as a bildungsroman; Lidia acknowledges her immaturity at the start, something that will change as the events of the novel unfold.

“I swung around on the bench and began to play, getting louder as Mama scolded me. This was how it often was for us, and always had been.”

These thoughts from Lidia introduce two key components of her character. First, she ignores Mama, choosing instead to play the piano as Mama “scold[s]” her. Second, she acknowledges that things have “always” been that way between them—with Mama telling her what to do and Lidia ignoring her. This shows Lidia’s immaturity, as she intentionally annoys her mother. It also highlights the conflict between the two, as Lidia never feels good enough to be loved by Mama.

“When I was six years old, I spent an entire afternoon sitting beside Ryszard, watching him flatten out balls of clay, then mold them into shapes to create a small house. […] For reasons I couldn’t explain, even today, as soon as his back was turned, I gathered a fist and punched it straight through the roof. […] At the time, I hadn’t fully understood how much that had devastated him. After all, it was only clay. But I did understand now.”

As Lidia and her family drive through Warsaw, she compares the destruction from the German bombing that she sees to destroying Ryszard’s clay house when they were younger. This metaphor conveys the impact that the devastation has on her. Although the two are vastly different—clay houses versus an entire city—it is Lidia’s young mind’s only way of comprehending something so devastating.