Darkness fell swiftly, at first an enemy, but then a friend.
Each Ursula's death is described as a falling of darkness, terrifying at first, but then comforting. The darkness brings the finality, but also escape from pain. The theme of death and resurrection is the main one in the novel, and it questions the idea of death as a new beginning, a new chance.
Sylvie was another casualty of war, another statistic.
Quite soon in the novel, it is revealed that Ursula's mother commits suicide sometime in the middle of the Second World War. Only later is revealed that she does it after her favorite, Teddy dies during the mission. It serves as a confirmation that Sylvie only really loved one of her children, and that she didn't see the reason to live for others. Sylvie could be seen as one of the most morally gray characters in the novel. Her distance from her daughters and her traditional, therefore damaging views of women could be seen as rooted in her own upbringing and her own sacrifice which led to unhappiness.
There must be something written on her skin, in her face, that some people could read and others couldn't.
The novel is not for the faint of heart, as it talks about rather heavy topics. One of such is sexual assault, which Ursula goes through in one of her lives. She is very young when it happens to her and her lack of education or knowledge, lack of support from her mother leads to her silence and her confusion as to what happened to her and why she instinctively feels that it's something very wrong. It is a disturbing and terrifying scene where it's shown that there is no safety for a young girl, even at her home among her family. This is further intensified by the fact that the one who assaulted her was brought and invited by her older brother and greeted by her parents on his way back. Consequently and sadly, Ursula begins to doubt herself, her femininity and tries to find faults in her own body, instead of blaming the assaulter, which is a heavy portrayal of victim-blaming when it comes to violence against women.
