“Henry heard perfectly well. But right then, in a split second, an Apollonian idea had ignited in his head, one that he kept jealously to himself. He wouldn’t take his granddaughter to see a child psychiatrist, no! Instead, he would administer a therapy of a totally different kind, a therapy capable of compensating for the ugliness inundating her childhood.”

When Dadé concocts the idea of giving Mona an art education, he spurs the overarching narrative plot line. This passage explains why the novel is structured around a series of visual artworks, as each chapter details one of Mona and Dadé’s weekly museum sessions. Dadé’s idea is also his way of investing in his granddaughter, teaching her valuable lessons, and helping her cope with the potential of losing her sight.

“For now, she felt just a wrench, because this call to grow up, this thrilling exploration of a new world, exerted an extraordinary magnetic pull, particularly because the call came from Henry, whom she revered. And yet, she had an awful presentiment, a fear in her soul that what you give back, you might never find again. Regret, distant as it was vivid, for a forever vanished childhood clamped on her heart.”

Mona’s internal monologue during her first museum visit with Dadé ignites her personal growth journey. Visiting the artworks and listening to Dadé’s art history lessons makes Mona realize how young and naive she is. On the one hand, she feels “an extraordinary magnetic pull” to venture into adolescence. On the other hand, Mona is afraid of leaving her childhood behind. She senses that Dadé’s lessons might usher her from one phase of life into the other, but is unsure how to brave this transition. The passage introduces the theme of Navigating Self-Discovery Via Explorations of the Past.

“Henry noticed, as he led Mona through the museum for the third time, that she had looked more often at the sculptures and paintings that punctuated their progress. And even, several times, he’d sensed her pace slow, her hand loosen its grip on his, as if her curiosity had been drawn to something. This pleased him; it meant that she felt stimulated, rather than overcome with weariness.”

The third person narrator inhabits Dadé’s consciousness in this passage to provide perspective on Mona’s childhood experience. The narrator is describing Mona through Dadé’s lens, which reveals that she is indeed enjoying her time at the museums with her grandfather. Her enjoyment pleases Dadé because he is eager to connect with and to guide Mona. Dadé assumes the role of her archetypal guide, which is conveyed via this scene: Dadé is standing close by Mona but is not intruding upon her experience.

“Because the imagination always chases after more imagination, creating a spiral that feeds on its own momentum. This painting tells us about the wonderful thrill of imagining things ever more deeply, and invites us to trust this prodigious faculty, which allows the invisible to become visible and the improbable possible.”

Dadé offers this lesson on imagination to Mona while they are studying Titian’s The Pastoral Concert. Dadé’s remarks bridge the gap between childhood and adulthood. He is implying that Mona must treasure her imagination and rely on it even as she grows older. He is stressing how redemptive and clarifying the imagination can be; in turn, his words foreshadow how Mona’s complex interior world will guide her through her ophthalmological condition and discoveries surrounding her late grandmother, reflecting Art Education as Emotional Formation.

“Mona, at first taken aback, intimidated by this cold aggression, then had a disconcerting reaction: she stretched, letting out a little sigh of pleasure, as if she wanted to loosen her limbs, make them more elastic to make them bigger, to free herself, as far as she could, from her child’s body so as to join this world of adults into which she’d just reluctantly been thrust. And, by relaxing herself, she was lightening the oppressive atmosphere.”

Mona’s response to witnessing her parents’ fight contributes to the novel’s theme of art education as emotional formation. Prior to visiting the museums with her grandfather, Mona had a more immature approach to handling conflict. The museum visits have since offered her insight into the human experience and allowed her to “lighten the oppressive atmosphere” just by altering her perspective. This is a lesson she has learned from the art she has been studying, and the passage shows how she is emotionally developing.

“There, before The Astronomer, she gazed in silence at the scholar pondering and that gentle light flooding in, forgetting to think about what she’d say. Henry realized this. And the sight of such detachment, of a child drifting toward territories that seem so distant from childish pleasures, filled him with wonder. He felt proud of it, and, deep in his heart, slightly sad because he anticipated his own absence in this strange other world.”

In this scene, the narrator again shifts into Dadé’s consciousness to offer perspective on Mona’s character. Dadé is observing his granddaughter and musing on her response to The Astronomer. While proud, Dadé also realizes the fleeting nature of his relevance to Mona’s life. The passage furthers the theme of Building Intergenerational Intimacy Through Teaching. Dadé has indeed strengthened his and Mona’s bond via their weekly lessons, but his role as her teacher will inevitably end, too, as he empowers her to navigate the world on her own.

“The two of them made a strange spectacle. The older one was riveted to the virtual flux, going from one video to the next, as if chain-smoking. Her increasing feverishness was obvious to Mona, who was watching her with beautiful, sad eyes. So, rather than tug her sleeve, without warning she slid her finger onto the phone and pressed the touch screen to halt the video.”

While waiting at the ophthalmological center to see Dr. Van Orst, Camille struggles to engage with her daughter. Instead of comforting or reassuring Mona, Camille engrosses herself in her phone to distract herself from her own anxiety. Diction like “riveted” and “feverishness” convey how entranced Camille is, while the “chain-smoking” metaphor creates a harried, angsty mood. Mona cannot rely on her mother for comfort and has to stop the video she is watching to get her attention. The scene conveys Mona’s need for adult figures who can guide her.

“Goya’s painting teaches us that whatever happens, humanity produces and will produce the monstrous, that it churns out nightmares. It’s alarming, but Goya’s painting also teaches us to admit it, to be clear-sighted about our share of darkness.”

The lesson Dadé teaches Mona from the Goya painting provides metaphoric insight into Mona’s eye condition. Dadé is talking about lightness and darkness, dreams and nightmares, good and evil. The narrative will later reveal that Mona has stricken the negative from her life to such a degree that she cannot even use negative constructions in her linguistic expression. Dadé is encouraging her to embrace and forgive the “darker” aspects of her nature and experience, as they are a natural part of being human. To be alive is to achieve a balance between the good and the bad.

“In this early spring, the months of April, May and June still seemed long enough to Mona, Jade, and Lili for them to enjoy their never-ending friendship. But they weren’t entirely kids anymore. Lili’s parents’ divorce and her planned departure to another country made the imminent curtailing of their childhood real, turning it into a magic dust called memory. Mona could feel tears welling up in her eyes.”

The narrator’s remarks on Mona’s friendships with Lili and Jade convey how Mona is changing over time. The springtime references and descriptions conjure notions of new life, growth, and change—which Mona is undergoing in her own right. She wants to hold onto her friends but realizes that even these seemingly “never-ending friendships” cannot last forever. Her eyes well up because she is mourning this truth, newly capable of acknowledging life’s bittersweet nature.

“Then, without warning, something gigantic appeared, something beyond space and time. ‘Those whom you love,’ the voice continued, and it was more than a suggestion, almost like an incantation. Her psyche was swayed, and feelings of boundless gentleness and sadness combined and grew.”

The images and sensations Mona experiences during her first hypnotherapy session offer her psychological and physiological insight into herself. Mona is visualizing her closest family members when a voice remarks on “those she loves.” These experiences imply that the key to Mona’s condition, past, and identity lies in her relationships to her loved ones. The passage also uses descriptive language to enact Mona’s ethereal experience—words like “swayed,” “boundless,” and “grew” conjuring notions of dreamy exploration.

“But as the trio hastened to the exit, the little girl suddenly had a terrible thought: she’d missed the opportunity to walk around the painting, a unique chance as it was now sitting on an easel rather than stuck on the wall. They immediately turned round. She was able to slip behind Saint-Lazare Station and plunge through the looking glass. There she saw an aged, dirty-brown canvas and a wooden stretcher. Gosh! How measly, cobbled together, fragile it all suddenly seemed to her!”

When Mona visits the museum storerooms with Dadé and Hélène, she gets a glimpse of the back of a painting. The sight horrifies her because the canvas and frame contrast so sharply with the transporting painting on the front. Mona is learning that every great work of art embodies the dichotomies of the human experience—the beautiful and the ugly, the transformative and the banal. The passage furthers the theme of art education as emotional formation, because Mona is learning about life from the art.

“There, it was over. She had resisted the urge to just stop, right in the middle of her lesson. But she was still thinking about her grandfather, convinced there was an unbridgeable gap between his knowledge and her own childish abilities. ‘I am rubbish; I am rubbish,’ her mind kept whispering.”

Mona’s class presentation troubles her confidence and sense of self. Since she is presenting on a work of art, Mona cannot help comparing her presentation to the weekly oral lessons her grandfather gives her at the museum. Instead of remarking on how much he has taught her, Mona berates herself for not being as intelligent as Dadé and not measuring up to his knowledge. Mona is still accepting her own personal growth process and developing her identity. The passage also furthers the theme of building intergenerational intimacy through teaching: Mona doesn’t frame it this way to herself, but her grandfather’s lessons have only increased her admiration of him; she berates herself because she looks up to Dadé and wants to be more like him.

“The mystery of her presence during the hypnosis sessions and the discovery—no less extraordinary—of items belonging to her at her father’s store had combined to fill her with a mournfulness that she could no longer control. Sometimes, alone in the store, she was tempted to slip down into the cellar and take something else from the archives.”

Mona’s musings on her late grandmother further the novel’s explorations of navigating self-discovery via explorations of the past. In both her weekly hypnotherapy sessions and her excavations of Paul’s shop basement, Mona encounters a slew of clues to her late grandmother’s secret past. These clues help Mona understand her connection to Colette (Mamie) and inspire her to study her family history to make better sense of her own identity.

“But her words, spoken casually, terrified the child. Fifty-fifty? One hundred percent? She remembered that exchange between her mother and the doctor from a few months ago very clearly. Wasn’t that a reference to the risk of becoming totally blind?”

The narrator’s use of rhetorical questions in this passage creates a harried, anxious tone, which mirrors Mona’s worried state of mind. Mona is listening to her mother’s conversation with Dr. Van Orst about her condition and trying to decipher their meaning. Since no one is explaining the truth to her, she begins to worry about her prognosis. This experience is similar to Mona’s confusion around Mamie’s death: The adults hide the truth to protect her, but only end up intensifying her upset.

“The subconscious is a buried part of our mind, which intrudes regularly while we’re awake, by, for example, strangely associating one image with another, like you did. But mainly, the subconscious expresses itself with total freedom while we’re dreaming. And it reveals to us, through messages that our intelligence can’t understand straight off, all sorts of things we might desire or fear, often without knowing it, without allowing ourselves to do so, or to express them.”

Dadé’s explanation of the subconscious provides insight into Mona’s psychological experience. Dadé is explaining how powerful the human subconscious can be. If Mona engages with and remembers her dreams, he suggests, she might gain a better understanding of herself. His words foreshadow the discoveries she will make about her grandmother via her hypnotherapy sessions. The passage also speaks to how Mona’s subconscious has absorbed things Mamie has said.

“Briefly, she felt as if she were suffocating, stifled by the heat. With an absurd reflex, she pulled off her pendant to get a bit of air, as she might have done a scarf or sweater. Her pulse quickened again. She lifted her head because she wanted to see that little bit of gray wall once more. It was black. Everything was black. She froze for several seconds, her eyes shuttered, as the nightmare of blindness returned.”

The narrator uses descriptive language to enact the intensity of Mona’s TIA at the museum. Word choices like “suffocating,” “stifled,” “quickened,” “black,” “froze,” and “shuttered” create a claustrophobic mood, which mirrors Mona’s emotional and psychological experiences during this second bout of blindness. At the same time, the passage foreshadows Dr. Van Orst’s later discovery surrounding Mona’s pendant: that removing it causes her to lose her connection with her grandmother and in turn to lose her sight.

“‘I’ve got it,’ Mona said, after some careful consideration. ‘A rider is free; he gallops wherever he wants to! He sets off on adventures! And here, he’s even blue, and that’s really important because it’s the color of the sky. You told me that in front of Raphael’s Beautiful Gardener. This blue rider is an allegory of our mind, which can go wherever it wants.’”

Mona’s enthusiastic interpretation of Kandinsky’s The Blue Rider painting conveys how much she is benefiting from her weekly museum visits with Dadé. Mona is remarking on the painting and offering up her own experience of it. She is deriving meaning from the work without relying on her grandfather to provide the answer. She references mental freedom, too, which provides insight into what she is feeling and what she wants. The passage furthers the theme of art education as emotional formation.

“‘It’s the viewers who make the paintings.’ The child smiled. She loved the statement, thinking that she herself, a mere little girl, was playing a crucial role every time she went to a museum; thanks to her, the paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings kept inside the museums lit up, came to life.”

Mona enjoys the concept of infusing meaning into the artworks she sees because she longs for a sense of purpose. The notion that viewers in fact “make the paintings” furthers the theme of navigating self-discovery via explorations of the past, in that Mona is learning about herself by studying ancient works of art. She is activating these static artifacts of the past.

“‘It will protect you from everything.’ Those were the words of Mona’s grandmother when she had removed the cornet-seashell pendant from her neck to put it around her granddaughter’s, instead. Colette looked proud, resolute, and a little sad. And Mona hallucinated that she was right there, in front of her […] Finally, there was this instruction: ‘Keep the light forever inside you, my darling.’ This message, incomprehensible to the three-year-old Mona was when she’d heard it now suddenly meant something to the young girl she was becoming.”

Mona’s vision of her late grandmother during one of her hypnotherapy sessions provides insight into Mona’s eye condition and her connection to her family history, invoking navigating self-discovery via explorations of the past. The passage also clarifies Mona’s pendant’s symbolic significance. When Mamie gives Mona the pendant, she is giving her a piece of herself, offering her the light she once carried inside of her, and granting her a connection to her grandfather. To “keep the light forever inside of her,” Mona must keep the necklace on at all times. This is why she loses her sight when she removes it. Mona finds the answer to the riddle of her TIAs via her own internal explorations even before Dr. Van Orst offers his report.

“Her eyes were wide open, pupils dilated, but all clarity had gone. The nightmare […] of blindness was starting again, along with feeling unbearably cold… The doctor’s voice urged her to breathe. A wave of warmth revived her body […] She hung the pendant back around her neck […] And the universe reappeared, as if the dawn had swallowed up the dark in an instant.”

The narrator employs figurative, descriptive, and sensory language to enact Mona’s experience of losing her sight once more. Language including “nightmare,” “unbearably,” “cold,” “warmth,” and “swallowed” enact the intensity of what Mona is experiencing. The darkness that envelops her feels like its own entity “swallowing” her up. Schlesser renders this moment with much the same detail and care as he renders his surrounding descriptions of the artwork Mona and Dadé study.

“It broke the old man’s heart. On the other hand, nothing’s finer than to be just what one is if one is Mona, but that, Mona didn’t yet grasp. On the other, it was clear that Mona did look like someone. It was blatantly obvious that strength, grace, and goodness flowed in her veins. She just didn’t know the source, that was all. But Henry could see it.”

Dadé’s observations of his granddaughter reveal why he feels so connected to his granddaughter. He has always cared about her, but Dadé is particularly attached to Mona the more her “strength, grace, and goodness” resemble his late wife’s. Mona looks like her physically, but as she matures, she proves to have a similar sensibility to Mamie—a fact which intensifies Dadé’s affection for her.

“When Camille saw the file in her daughter’s hands, she was relieved, anxious, and mainly impatient, all at once. ‘Mommy, Daddy, I wanted it to be me who told you what…I wanted to describe all that happened myself. So here it goes.’”

Mona’s decision to open and review Dr. Van Orst’s report before her parents conveys her maturity. Mona knows there is a chance his assessment might contain a difficult prognosis; nevertheless, she braves the file without fear. She is facing life’s challenges with confidence and maturity. She even assumes a rather adult role in this scene, delivering the sensitive information to her parents in a way they can handle, rather than vice versa.

“‘Yes, that’s true. Inside her boxes, like in Christian Boltanski’s work, your mother and I carefully stored nearly all of the little things, the trifles that she’d left behind…Do you know that she loved the ashtrays from hotel bars? I remember that, back then, she would do her best to swipe them!’ He smiled at this memory. ‘Once, as she was slipping out of Le Bristol hotel, a waiter pointed out to her that her handbag was smoking!’”

Dadé’s excited recollections surrounding his late wife’s former belongings convey how Mona is helping him to confront his loss and grief for the first time. At Dadé’s instruction, Mona’s family has resisted speaking about Mamie since her death by assisted suicide seven years prior. When Mona finds her things in the shop basement, she urges her family to speak about Colette, to remember her, and to tell her story. Dadé takes his granddaughter’s advice in this scene and discovers how joyful and healing it is to remember Colette despite his lingering sorrow.