“All the pictures are brightly lit and in focus but one: it’s of the same bedroom but now in semi-darkness, the curtains drawn, the walls streaked with that orangey light that filters into a room when you wake up late and the sun is already high, and maybe it’s a Sunday, or maybe it’s not. The life promised by these images is clear and purposeful, uncomplicated.”

Latronico uses second person to bring the reader into the scene. The construction “you wake up late” and the uncertainty of the “maybe,” “maybe not” construction suggest a situation in which an outside viewer or reader can picture herself. The reader is invited to the same experience of someone viewing the apartment listing: surveying visual details and considering how they would feel in the pictured setting.

“The environment where they slept and worked, and which they themselves had chosen and shaped, was the one tangible manifestation of who they were. That apartment and those objects weren’t merely reflections of their personalities: they provided a foothold, in their eyes proof of a grounded lifestyle, which, from another perspective (that of, say, their parents’ generation) appeared loose. In itself, chaos could be joyful, creative; but in that context, it only seemed to signal impermanence.”

Throughout the novel, identity is connected closely to space, environment, and aesthetic detail, while also invoking The Complexities of Detachment and Authenticity. This chapter transitions from the representation of images in Part 1 to the realities of life as Anna and Tom experience them. Their contentment is closely connected to the beauty of their space; as the apartment becomes more cluttered throughout the day, they are unhappier. This passage suggests that ordered space is important to Anna and Tom in part because it offsets other chaotic parts of their freelance, expatriate lifestyle.

“They would survey each room in silence: all those clear surfaces, all that free space, everything finally in its place in the violet light of dawn. For a few glorious seconds they would see their apartment just as they wanted it, perfectly superimposable onto the pictures”

This passage emphasizes the extent to which Anna and Tom focus on appearance as a metric of their happiness, reflecting The Negative Effects of Social Media on Intimacy. How they wish their apartment could look is incompatible with daily life, and can only exist in pictures or for brief moments of time. Pictures/images function as motifs throughout the novel; in this instance, they symbolize an ideal but unachievable representation of reality.

“The internet came of age with them. Like their own entrance into adulthood, it didn’t happen overnight but gradually, in a way that only seemed inevitable after the fact. There must have been a precise moment when knowing their way around Dreamweaver no longer constituted a hobby but a professional qualification, just as there must have been a first time they logged on to a website using their real names as opposed to some vaguely Anglo-American-sounding pseudonyms. They had started paying social security contributions the same year in which—after a long and painful wait—they were finally able to join Facebook.”

Computer skills and their design careers are an important aspect of Anna and Tom’s personality. This passage characterizes their past experience and how their passion developed into their career. It suggests why their jobs are so central to their personalities: It’s based on a skillset both developed in their youth and connected to their passions. Latronico uses simile to compare their coming of age to that of the Internet; the specificity of software platforms helps contextualize the temporal setting of the novel without explicitly stating the year it takes place.

“Anna and Tom had grown up with the notion that individuality manifested itself as a set of visual differences, immediately decodable and in constant need of updating. They were well prepared by the time the demand to express what makes each person special had spread from teenage online profile pages to brands, companies, shops and professionals all over the world. Everyone wanted a website, logo or graphic. Everyone sought a little beauty, a unique point within a coordinate system of differences. Anna and Tom understood this need instinctively.”

This passage significantly connects the human need for difference and being “special” to the same need for companies from a branding perspective. The social need and the marketing need for uniqueness both relate to aesthetics, as “everyone sought a little beauty.” Latronico thus highlights the connection between aesthetics and identity, but implicitly critiques it by emphasizing the fact that humans are commodifying themselves and becoming too obsessed with image-making, reflecting the negative effects of social media on intimacy.

“The kind of adulting called to mind by their families and so painstakingly staged by their friends followed another generation’s script. Even with their regular salaries, their friends from home still earned less than Anna and Tom, two freelancers—at least in a good month. Plus, they were still stuck socializing with the same people from school. They still lived in the city where they were born.”

The word choice “adulting” highlights the contrast between Anna and Tom’s contemporary lifestyle and the expectations of their parents because it is a new term that originated on social media. Hughes’s translation choice emphasizes the new, social-media inflected way of life to which the passage refers. The passage also emphasizes Anna and Tom’s focus on comparison to others as the primary metric for their own success.

“The friends they made in Berlin […] all had related professions. They were graphic designers and front-end developers and artists who eked out a living either working for other artists, dabbling in graphic design or mounting drywall booths at art fairs […] The form that community took was more of a lattice than a circle, with relationships based on affinity and emulation, affection, intimacy, similarity, schadenfreude, and support.”

Anna and Tom’s friends are characterized primarily as a collective group with shared characteristics. They are rarely named, and there are no individuals who recur thought the text as characters. The list of job titles in this passage emphasizes the large size of the group; despite their varied professions, they share an expatriate experience and the experience of living in Berlin. The metaphor of the community as a lattice suggests their interconnectedness as circumstantial and based on a variety of factors including similarity, but not as unified or consistent as a “circle” of friends might be, reflecting the complexities of detachment and authenticity.

“They would imagine how they must look to the outside world with their aching cheekbones drawn into fixed grins, their clothes smeared with cigarette ash and sweat, and still carrying the odd trace of dimly remembered adventures […] They would feel decadent and enviable, alive. By early afternoon the first stirrings of anxiety would make themselves felt, then slowly build like a gathering storm. They would remember the supermarkets, closed on Sundays, their client calls scheduled for Monday, the work due by Friday.”

This passage emphasizes the importance of appearances not only to Anna and Tom, but also to the other members of their community. The use of third person plural suggests the shared experience of imagining other people’s jealousy of their free-spirited partying adventures. It also highlights the negative aspects of their experience, as everyone’s collective anxiety about their impending responsibilities built. The gathering storm simile suggests the power and inevitability of the transition from relaxation to stress.

“They never doubted they would grow old together. The sex was infrequent and bad.”

Latronico creates subtle comedy through juxtaposition. The statement about Anna and Tom’s commitment and love contrasts the following sentence about their substandard sex life. The shift is jarring and unexpected, introducing the problem of the negative effects of social media on intimacy by revealing how it creates dissatisfaction and insecurity in Tom and Anna's sex life.

“If a taxi passed they might hail it. Otherwise they would walk home in the gray light of dawn, hands clasped, exhilarated, unified. And also, in truth, relieved to have spared themselves the STD tests, glad they hadn’t accepted those water bottles, baggies, and vials. Once in bed, their excitement would soften into tenderness. They would spoon under the covers, let their breathing fall in sync, and tell themselves that no sex party could ever be a match for the intimacy and gratification of that closeness. In the morning that thought would seem pathetic.”

Here, the negative effects of social media on intimacy come to the fore again. Anna and Tom’s motivation to visit sex clubs is feeling like they are lacking compared to their more adventurous friends and social media accounts. While they are pleased with their choice not to have sex with other people and value their intimacy, they undercut the thought by returning to a worry about what other people think and the idea that the thought might “seem pathetic.”

“They lived a double life. There was the tangible reality around them, and there were the images, also all around them. Those images would be on the phone that woke them up. An astronaut singing in outer space. A girl writing a wrecking ball. They would light up their pillows as they roused from sleep and parade, one after the other, beneath their fingertips while they used the bathroom.”

Latronico emphasizes the contrast between reality and online images in this passage. The “double life” concept connotes espionage or dramatic secrecy. Used in this context, it emphasizes the all-encompassing nature of the negative effects of social media on intimacy. The passage includes reference to real viral videos from the time period, contributing to its verisimilitude. The level of detail is enough to suggest the correspondence to reality, but doesn’t include specifics like names or places. The effect is suggesting reality but not focusing on the details of it.

“But polemics and current affairs were mere thunder and lightning in what was otherwise a deluge of beauty. On their screens—everywhere, all the time—acquaintances and old schoolmates and strangers from around the world would share all that was beautiful in their lives. The images followed no logical thread beyond their own splendor […] The bright green tropical leaves and the purplish-white dots on the begonias would parade across photo grids as evidence of a rarefied, curated life.”

This passage’s visual detail recalls that of the opening chapter describing the apartment photos. It emphasizes the importance of beauty and hyperfocus on aesthetics to Anna and Tom, which even inflects their own hobbies and interests. The use of the word “parade” suggests the constant movement and pageantry of the images, while the phrase “rarefied, curated life” suggests the superficiality of living only for image.

“The most striking dishes would be photographed, tagged, and shared. Those images would then travel to the other end of the planet, bouncing along in low Earth orbit or speeding across ocean ridges, reaching the screens of their peers in Lyon, Helsinki, and Valencia, who would look at them for a moment, entranced by the differences, before pressing a keyboard shortcut etched into their muscle memory, and getting back to work at a café with decent wifi […] A woman was beautiful. An apartment full of plants was beautiful. A vegan quiche was beautiful. A child needed money for chemo. Time disappeared.”

Latronico again highlights the variety of social media images and refers to real viral videos from the time period. The gestural detail of the keyboard shortcut from muscle memory echoes Anna and Tom’s experience with constant social media intrusions as they work on their computers. The repetition of “was beautiful” emphasizes the focus on aesthetic beauty, which leads to detachment from reality. It is in the same tone, but very different from, the child needing money for chemo. Beauty and the sad elements of “reality” are given equal weight, reflecting the complexities of detachment and authenticity.

“What was happening to the city—the replacement of its historical inhabitants with younger, wealthier newcomers, and the resulting price hikes and decline in diversity—was gentrification, a term used almost exclusively by the people who caused it. Anna and Tom were fully aware of this […] but they knew it in an unacknowledged, almost imperceptible way, like smokers when they think about cancer. Back when they had first arrived, things still cost very little. The shoe repairmen were in business until the Americans showed up. Gentrification, as they understood it, was something other people did.”

Berlin is represented almost as a character through the novel. This passage is a key moment showing the trajectory of the city’s composition and character. Over time, it loses the “freedom and abundance” because of the influx of young, wealthy newcomers that make it difficult or impossible for prior inhabitants to afford the rising cost of living. The passage also characterizes Anna and Tom as lacking a fully developed show of self-awareness and accountability, as they refuse to acknowledge their own part in The Problem of Expatriate Exploitation of Local Cultures.

“All that changed with the images of the drowned boy.”

This passage is central to the novel’s historical context of the 2015 refugee crisis. That it is a simple, one-sentence paragraph mirrors the starkness of the image it describes. It is stark in both form and content, and functions as a turning point for Anna and Tom, their social circle, their city, and the European Union at large.

“Word that a reception center would be set up on the site of the old Tempelhof airport hit people’s timelines like a blaring air-raid siren and mobilized Anna and Tom’s circle in a way that would have been unimaginable only days before.”

The simile of the news about the refugee reception center as an air-raid siren emphasizes the immediacy of the community’s reaction. The air-raid both connotes intense noise that inspires a quick response, and WWII history. The passage blends past and present with reference to the old airport and WWII alongside the reference to the news’ appearance on Facebook “timelines.”

“As they walked, the story of their years in Berlin would unfold around them, set far more firmly in the physical space of the city than in their memories […] There was Enrique and Miguel’s old apartment, two floors up from a brothel. The pair had moved to Berlin cash-rich from a redundancy payout and had intended to stay in the city before the winter chased them away. When was that, like, six years ago now?”

The passage highlights Anna and Tom’s unique, place-based memory. Their experience of the city over time is more connected to the place than how they experienced it. The inclusion of details of names and details suggests the breadth of their experiences in the city. The passage includes a unique statement that represents Anna and Tom’s way of speaking, though in prose rather than dialogue, with the inclusion of the conversational tic “like” in the last sentence.

“Every so often you would glimpse the figure of a man—and it was always a man—standing at the kitchen counter, dressed in dark clothes and slowly sipping from a wine glass. They moved with an almost unreal slowness. They seemed trapped in a pocket of light in the darkness of the city, as if in a fish tank. But if Anna and Tom watched them for too long the perspective would reverse and suddenly they would be overcome, dizzied, by the feeling that it was they who were trapped.”

The simile of the fish tank in this passage represents the significance of observing and being observed to Anna and Tom’s identities, and those of their contemporaries in Berlin. It suggests that comparison ultimately produces a feeling of entrapment, while also reflecting the complexities of detachment and authenticity.

“It wasn’t goodbye to Berlin, but it was nonetheless a parting. They would be put up in the hotel during October and November, but they decided to leave their next move to fate, subletting their apartment for a whole six months. If they were enjoying themselves, they would stay in Lisbon. Otherwise they would see out winter on an island somewhere in Greece or Italy being digital nomads (an expression that never failed to irritate them, but even they could sense the envy beneath their contempt).”

Anna and Tom’s departure from Berlin is significant in their character trajectory. The decision to leave for a longer-term indicates that what they want from life has changed, and that they have a freedom of movement denied to those, like the migrants and refugees, who lack their socioeconomic privilege. Their contempt for the term “digital nomads” is ironic given their freelance and expatriate experience, with their lack of awareness of how their transient attitude to Berlin impacts the city reflecting the problem of expatriate exploitation of local cultures.

“And there was something about Lisbon that struck them as similar. The crumbling Art Nouveau apartment buildings had plants in every window or had undergone more fishtank renovations with new extensions in glass and steel; the blackboards in front of the cafés advertised pastéis instead of Nordsee-Frühstück, but the brand of oat milk in their flat whites was the same. The aluminum laptops glinting on outdoor tables were also the same.”

This passage emphasizes the humorous similarities between two very different locations and the idea that modern aesthetic tastes produce sameness rather than variety. The detail that “the oat milk in their flat whites was the same” is timely and comedic as it references the popularity of non-dairy milk options. Anna and Tom’s inability to see places as unique reflects the problem of expatriate exploitation of local cultures, creating a homogenous, detached parallel reality wherever they go.

“There were moments when it felt like they were on holiday or traveling (they weren’t), and when they focused on certain details they could sense the possibility of being excited by life again, a little like the feeling of sleep emerging through the darkness of insomnia. Happiness was there, tantalizingly close, and achievable with a simple operation of the mind. But seconds later the sight of the concrete shell of a half-finished building, or a dilapidated shopping center surrounded by rubbish and burned-out cars, was enough to remind them they were still very far from what they wanted.”

This passage emphasizes the complexities of detachment and authenticity theme of the novel. In this instance, the intrusion of ugly details reminds Anna and Tom that they are unhappy, and they are disconnected from the positive aspects of their experience.

“Through all of this they continued to document their remote working life on social media. The pictures were always stunning, enticing—prickly pear groves, Camparis on red plastic beach tables, sunsets over vineyards, carved tufa limestone facades, stray cats, their laptops usually somewhere in the frame to prove they weren’t on holiday—evidence of a life of freedom and adventure, one full of beauty and hard work, and with occasional surprises. Yet something in their spirits had changed […] Now those images just seemed like a con.”

This passage highlights the change in Anna and Tom’s perspective on how they represent their life online and speaks to the negative effects of social media on intimacy. Ironically, they realize that the images are a “con” rather than something that should supersede reality, but do not actually stop posting or attributing significance to social media.

“They will be tempted to search elsewhere for what they found all those years ago in Berlin and then tried and failed to find again that winter […] How long will they be able to go on like this? In theory, forever.”

A unique characteristic of the novel is its lack of individuals as characters. Anna and Tom are characterized as a unit that operates as a microcosm of a broader subsection of expatriate culture. This passage highlights how Anna and Tom are stuck in a cycle of meaningless thrill-seeking and image-making, regardless of where they go, reflecting the complexities of detachment and authenticity.