The daughter has assumed another name in her "daily" life--she is Clarisse Riviere at home, Malinka in her mother's apartment when she visits her. Clarisse's young daughter, Ladivine, is named after the mother she visits, though neither daughter nor grandmother is aware of their shared name. This double identity is enough to stimulate the curiosity and capture the interest of almost any reader. The story does not become any simpler. As it proceeds, we realize that all the characters, in spite of love and good intentions, are caught in their own incomprehension of the others' feelings and motives; failures of basic comprehension, blindness to the needs of their closest relatives, assumptions about the "meaning" of gestures or expressions, all lead to profound loneliness and alienation, even in the close presence, side by side in a bed or enclosed in a car. To some extent, these failures of understanding or empathy are tied to, or even caused by, carefully held secrets, assumed or falsified identities, masks, concealment.
