Monolith

Monolith is a T. Rex song identified in the book’s recurring music cues. Its appearance is tied to a reflection on the disappearance of a part of Berlin: the track marks a pause in which urban change and personal attachment meet, giving a musical recurrence to a loss the narrator can manage only by avoiding it.

Appearance in the Book

The song is named twice in succession in the sequence following the narrator’s insistence that she and Arthur did nothing wrong that evening. It appears again among the closing music cues, where it is listed between “Breezeblocks” by Alt-J and “Spicks and Specks” by the Bee Gees. These placements make the title recur across the book rather than function as a single incidental reference.

Place and Loss

The first appearance is followed by the narrator’s meditation on a substantial part of Berlin that will have vanished by the time other people read her account. She describes how residents repeatedly mourn places they had assumed would last, while a small street found by chance can retain an intense, almost private brilliance. The juxtaposition makes the song’s recurrence part of a passage about how places acquire meaning through individual experience, even when their loss attracts little public attention.

Narrative Significance

The narrator admits that she has not faced this particular kind of loss before: ordinarily, she leaves places dear to her and later discovers that they continued without her. Here, she copes by refusing to think about the disappearing place and avoiding that side of the metro map; her nostalgia remains constant but manageable because nothing compels her to return. The repeated musical cue sits beside this strategy of avoidance, linking recurrence in the book’s soundtrack with a memory the narrator tries not to revisit. The text does not explain the song’s lyrics or assign it a fixed meaning; its significance rests on its placement and return.