Venice

Venice enters the novel as a destination rather than a described setting: Tonino announces that he is leaving for the city, and Giovanna later sets out to find him with Ida. The journey’s significance lies less in any portrait of Venice than in the choices and promises attached to it—the refusal to wait for permission, the companionship of a friend, and a resolve to become adults differently from the adults around them.

A City Beyond Naples

Venice first appears in Tonino’s farewell. When Giovanna asks where he is going, he answers, “Venice,” and says he will leave that night. His departure makes the city a point of separation from Naples, where his family and relationships remain: he has not given enough thought to his mother, Giuliana, or Giovanna, as Giovanna later tells him through Corrado. Venice thus stands at the far end of an abrupt break, not as a place the novel has yet described in detail.

The contrast resonates with the book’s earlier geography of Naples. Giovanna has understood the city through journeys between the elevated neighborhoods where she grew up and the lower, unfamiliar districts connected with her father’s relatives. Those movements make distance a measure of social and familial estrangement. Venice extends that pattern beyond the city: it is a destination reached by train, far from the local ties that have so far organized Giovanna’s life.

From Tonino’s Departure to a Shared Plan

After considering whether to call Rosario, Giovanna decides she has no urgent need to lose her virginity and turns instead to Ida, asking whether she will go to Venice. Ida agrees; Costanza is happy to have her away for a while and gives her money. The plan therefore takes shape not as a romantic expedition but as a journey between friends, made possible by Ida’s willingness to accompany Giovanna.

Giovanna then calls Tonino at the restaurant where he works. He initially welcomes the idea, but hesitates when he learns Ida is coming, explaining that his small room in Mestre cannot accommodate three people. Giovanna insists that they will come to say hello regardless, and that they can manage even if he does not want to meet. Tonino changes his tone and says he will be expecting them. The exchange makes the journey real while exposing its uncertain hospitality: the visitors are going on their own terms, without assuming that Tonino can house them.

Departure and Narrative Significance

The next day, Giovanna leaves for Venice with Ida. On the train, they promise each other that they will become adults as no one ever had before. The promise gives the departure its decisive meaning. Venice is not presented as a cure for the disappointments they leave behind, nor does the narrative describe what happens there; instead, the journey closes this portion of Giovanna’s story on a shared declaration of intent.

The ending also shifts the emphasis from Tonino’s choice to Giovanna’s. He has left Naples alone, while she travels with Ida after weighing other possibilities and deciding that sex is not an urgent goal. The city becomes the destination of a friendship and an experiment in adulthood: not an arrival with a known outcome, but a departure whose promise belongs to the two young women themselves.