43 pages • 1-hour read
Vincenzo Latronico, Transl. Sophie HughesPerfection
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of child death and sexual content.
The Negative Effects of Social Media on Intimacy
Social media has a significant presence throughout the novel. It is important to Anna and Tom’s social life and fuels how they view their life largely in comparison to others. While social media seems full of life and glamor for expatriates like Anna and Tom, the novel reveals the negative effects of social media on intimacy.
First, social media erodes Anna and Tom’s intimacy by changing how they relate to one another. It takes up a significant portion of their time, removing them from focusing on their immediate surroundings and one another. They spend time immersed in separate worlds of timelines and reels from the moment they wake up. Their shared experience slips between digital and actual, as they converse on Facebook and Slack, even when they are in the same room, and talk in real life about things they saw on social media. Both Anna and Tom are also ashamed of the time they spend on social media. Although it is a mutual problem, they hide it from each other: “Tom positioned his monitor at an angle to avoid it being reflected in the windows of the office they shared” (53) and Anna “would quickly switch desktop before he walked past” (53-54). Latronico emphasizes the importance of this deception though individual language—this is one of only a few instance in the text in which the couple are referenced as individuals rather than a unit.
Anna and Tom are also overly influenced by what they see on social media, constantly trying to imitate what they think others do instead of following their own instincts and preferences. They fear that their sex life is bad, even though it satisfies them, because of what other people are doing or might think: “They would climax once and then call it a day, lie in each other’s arms, and silently wonder: Shouldn’t they fuck more often, come harder? […] The world around them offered such an exciting image of how their sex life could be” (42-43, emphasis added). Rather than focusing on what they need or want, Anna and Tom are fixated on what other people are doing and what they might be missing. Instead of communicating with one another and doing what works for them, they exchange the real intimacy of private communication and experience for trying to live up to a social media ideal.
Finally, social media also impacts how Tom and Anna relate to other people. While social media makes it easy for them to connect with other expats and find trendy hotspots to frequent, the narrative emphasizes that true interpersonal intimacy is lacking: Anna and Tom do not feel that any of their friendships are truly substantial or built to last in a crisis. In these ways, Perfection draws attention to how, in chasing an ideal image to project online, Anna and Tom’s life becomes disappointing and meaningless in reality.
The Problem of Expatriate Exploitation of Local Cultures
Anna and Tom are characterized as a couple, not individuals. They represent a stereotype of creative professionals, expatriates, and digital nomads who can work abroad as freelancers in foreign cities. Through Anna and Tom’s experiences, the novel suggests the homogenizing effects of globalization while exposing the problem of expatriate exploitation of local cultures.
The novel repeatedly emphasizes how Anna and Tom form only superficial connections with the communities they live in, preferring to remain apart in an insular parallel community of expats. The novel describes the expatriate experience as something surreal, calling it a “mythology” and a “quasi reality” (21-22) to emphasize that it is not grounded in authentic connection or understanding of the local culture. The narrative notes that Anna and Tom, despite living in Berlin for years, have only a superficial understanding of the city’s history and local culture, as they socialize only with other expats, speak only rudimentary German, and are not interested in forming rooted, local ties.
The novel suggests that, due to their detachment and transience, Anna and Tom benefit from the conditions of living abroad but do not meaningfully contribute to where they live. The narrative notes, “They and all their friends belonged to an imprecise political left” and “were willing to express outrage at instances of racism or sexism that took place in New York” (64), with the reference to “New York” suggesting that Anna and Tom are more aware of what is going on in other countries than in the city they live in. They are also defined by their political apathy: Their politics are “imprecise” because Anna and Tom do not feel any real stakes in the issues surrounding them. The most significant example of this apathy occurs during the migrant crisis. While Anna and Tom get briefly involved, they soon lose interest, both because they are not well-integrated enough into Berlin society to help in any sustained way, and because they ultimately do not feel overly affected by the crisis’s socioeconomic effects.
The novel’s ending implies that, although they return to their native country, Anna and Tom’s attitude as expatriates has not really changed. They convert the farmhouse they inherit into a luxury guesthouse, helping to fuel the problems of overtourism and expatriate exploitation even in their own community instead of seeking to connect meaningfully with their fellow locals. Perfection thus suggests that, in an expatriate culture that encourages people to resist setting down roots, exploitation instead of genuine engagement is often the outcome.
The Complexities of Detachment and Authenticity
One of Anna and Tom’s defining characteristics is a heightened focus on aesthetics, both in their carefully curated social media image and in their graphic design work. In private, however, they struggle with feelings of dissatisfaction and meaninglessness, revealing the complexities of detachment and authenticity.
Latronico emphasizes the contrast between curated appearance and internal reality throughout the novel. The two are often represented as being in direct conflict with each other. After the detached, aesthetically ideal descriptions of the apartment in Part 1, Part 2 describes the apartment again as Anna and Tom relate to it, upset by its failure to align with aesthetic potential in real life: “All that respondent order would have begun to crumble by lunchtime under the strain of countless mundane tasks (the mail, their head cold, that urgent phone call), almost as if reality were fighting back to reassert its superiority” (14, emphasis added). Real life is therefore represented as in contention with aesthetic perfection, with Anna and Tom caring more for appearances than for what is authentic.
Anna and Tom’s detached way of interacting with the world is also reflected in how they choose to live. Their interests in house plants or cooking originate in the beautiful images they see on social media or what their social circle promotes, rather than in genuine passion for the hobbies. Anna and Tom consistently define themselves in relation to external factors: social media, other people’s opinions, their environment and its aesthetic qualities. Instead of trying to find what truly matters to them and pursuing it, they instead try to frame themselves to fit whatever they deem trendy or desirable, which leaves them with no real sense of what might actually make them happy.
Anna and Tom continue to fall into the problem of detachment even when they strive to make a change. Whenever they feel tired of Berlin, they try to escape to another city in the belief that it will inspire them or make them feel better. Instead, they find themselves feeling the same way all over again. Instead of seeing this pattern as a warning that they should turn inward to find contentment or authenticity, they double down on their commitment to image-making: “[T]he seductiveness of the images [they posted on social media] made them forget all the stress that lay just out of frame” (95).
Thus, wherever Anna and Tom go, they inevitably find themselves feeling detached and bored with their life. The novel ends with them feeling exhausted and annoyed after a weekend at their new luxury guesthouse, still seeking an illusive perfection that they never quite find. The novel thus suggests that satisfaction can only come through authenticity and genuine engagement, both with one’s surroundings and with others.
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