Carradori

Carradori, addressed as Dr. Carradori, is Marco Carrera’s physician and confidant, but the relationship grows beyond medical care into a friendship marked by practical counsel, frankness, and affection. He advises Marco after Adele’s death, when Marco is trying to care for Miraijin while living through grief, and remains close enough to be present at the end of Marco’s life. Their bond gives the novel a relationship in which professional trust and personal attachment meet without either being reduced to the other.

Identity and Role

Carradori’s role is established through the trust Marco places in his guidance. After Adele dies, Marco follows Carradori’s advice to live wildly for a time, concentrating on Miraijin and on the life still available to him. The advice is not presented as a cure for grief or as a model of parenting. Rather, it allows Marco to keep moving until he can make sense of what has happened and take a decisive step toward understanding his responsibilities and his past.

The novel also identifies Carradori as a doctor whom Marco addresses directly as such. Yet their conversations are not confined to treatment: Marco recounts decisions and failures to him, and the doctor asks what he sought in return for a choice he made. The clinical title remains present, but it becomes the frame for a conversation between people who know one another well enough to speak plainly.

Counsel After Adele’s Death

Adele’s death leaves Marco confronting a void he has not prepared himself to face. His familiar response is to remain standing amid catastrophe, but surviving this loss requires more strength and determination than he feels he possesses. In this period Carradori’s advice gives him room to care for Miraijin and to keep hold of life, even when his conduct is far from exemplary. Marco later recognizes that the unsettled period mattered because it helped him reach an understanding he could not have reached by simply suppressing grief.

That understanding arrives as Marco gives up the large winnings from a punishing poker match with Dami Tamburini. In recalling the choice to Carradori, he does not present it as a clean moral victory: Miraijin had a fever, he went out to play, he failed to return when told, and he continued gambling with an intensity that increased as he began to win. He describes being ashamed of these circumstances as well as of the scale of the winnings. The account makes Carradori a witness to the mixed motives around the decision, rather than merely the recipient of a triumphant explanation.

Marco’s eventual interpretation is that the suffering accumulated across his life has led him to raise Miraijin, whom he comes to believe is destined to help change the world. This conviction had first been Adele’s, and Marco had once repeated it partly to indulge his daughter. After her death, and after relinquishing the winnings, he accepts the idea as his own. Carradori’s place in the story is associated with the difficult passage between grief and this renewed sense of purpose: his advice helps Marco remain in life long enough to arrive at it.

A Continuing Friendship

Carradori remains close to Marco and Miraijin in the later events of the story. When Marco is resting, Miraijin tells him that Carradori has arrived. Marco immediately asks where he is; he learns that Carradori has gone for a walk on the beach with Marco’s mother, Marina. The exchange is brief, but its ease conveys that Carradori belongs within the family’s circle of care, not only in the earlier doctor-patient relationship.

The same scene places Carradori alongside the people gathered around Marco near the end of his life. His presence on the beach with Marina connects him to the quiet preparations for the final meeting, while Miraijin’s message ensures Marco knows he has come. The doctor is therefore both a familiar visitor and one of the people whose arrival matters to Marco as he approaches death.

Farewell and Significance

At the final gathering, Carradori takes his turn to approach Marco and offers his hand. Marco chooses how to respond, giving him the brisk, sporty grip of a handshake at the end of a tennis match. The gesture keeps the encounter from becoming solemnly ceremonial: their farewell retains the ease of people accustomed to each other, even as it carries the pain of parting.

Carradori tells Marco that he loves him. Marco answers by turning the conversation toward Carradori, and they both laugh. The exchange combines candor with deflection: affection is spoken directly, but Marco meets it in the familiar register of banter rather than allowing the moment to become an extended declaration. The novel presents Carradori as a friend whose care can include professional counsel, presence, and humor. In the closing encounter, the handshake and laughter make that friendship visible without obscuring the gravity of Marco’s approaching death.