Ida

Ida is Mariano and Costanza’s younger daughter, Angela’s sister, and one of Giovanna’s most trusted friends. Two years younger than Giovanna, she grows up within the same unusually close-knit circle of families and shares its habits of frank conversation and intellectual curiosity. Her arc brings together childhood intimacy, the rupture of the adults’ relationships, and a distinctly literary response to school and the future.

Identity and Background

Ida and Giovanna are raised alongside Angela by parents who have been friends for decades and share broadly similar views. The girls are not baptized and do not know prayers; they receive early information about their bodies through illustrated books and educational videos, and are encouraged to take pride in being girls. They read extensively, behave responsibly, and share a skeptical attitude toward consumer goods, even as they privately imagine becoming famous actresses. This common upbringing gives Ida and Giovanna a ready-made language of trust, though their friendship is initially less close than Angela’s and Giovanna’s because Ida is younger.

Ida distinguishes herself through her appetite for reading and her own creative work. She writes poems and stories, and Giovanna recognizes that Ida sometimes surpasses her and Angela as a reader. Her literary interests are not merely a childhood pastime: later, Ida describes school as an obstacle to expressing her vocation and talks about a novel inspired by the three girls. Writing becomes the clearest aim she states for herself.

Friendship with Giovanna

As a child, Ida is one of the people Giovanna turns to when she wants an honest assessment of herself. During a period when Giovanna worries that she is deteriorating in appearance and manner, she tests Angela and Ida as trusted witnesses. Ida does not offer the painful verdict Giovanna fears; when asked about Giovanna’s expression, she reports that she has a scowl, adding that Mariano says the same about Ida. The exchange gives Giovanna a small, concrete answer rather than confirmation of her broader anxieties.

Their friendship is affectionate as well as conversational. Giovanna recalls hugging and kissing Ida and Angela, wanting to draw their warmth close, and the girls’ ability to speak frankly and make peace when disagreements arose. Yet the adult crisis in their families makes their former closeness harder to sustain. After Mariano and Giovanna’s father fall out, Mariano disappears from the family’s home, and Giovanna sees the sisters less often. The girls talk on the telephone, trying to understand what has happened. Their shared childhood does not give them a full explanation, but it lets them recognize that the conflict is connected to their parents’ private relationships rather than only to the political and intellectual topics the adults had once argued about.

Reading the Family Crisis

Ida helps Giovanna test the stories she tells about the adults. Giovanna describes Vittoria’s close relationship with Enzo and her role with his children after his death, presenting Vittoria and Margherita as women who cooperated in raising them. When Giovanna says that Vittoria speaks to Enzo at the cemetery and receives advice from him, Ida asks whether the conversations resemble an ordinary exchange. Giovanna says yes; Ida then draws a direct conclusion about Enzo’s wishes, asking whether he wanted Vittoria to become a second mother to his children. Her question shows Ida listening for the relationships beneath Giovanna’s increasingly imaginative account.

When Angela later confides that she and Ida may be Mariano’s daughters by Giovanna’s father, and that Giovanna’s father may marry their mother after a divorce, Ida makes clear that the possibility does not replace her attachment to her own father. As Angela discusses her relationship with Tonino, Ida is present beside her and, in distress, insists that the girls are not sisters: she wants Mariano to remain her father. Giovanna answers by distinguishing the families rather than accepting the proposed kinship: whatever their parents may do, Angela and Ida will remain Mariano’s daughters, while she remains Andrea’s. The conversation turns an adult secret into a question of belonging that Ida voices plainly.

Writing, School, and Change

Ida’s literary ambition becomes more explicit as she grows older. She reads Giovanna poems that Giovanna finds beautiful and promises a long novel inspired by the three friends, though she has not yet found time to finish it. At the same meeting, Ida complains that school is boring and oppressive and obstructs the free expression of her writing. The visit also rekindles the friendship: Ida hugs Giovanna after her enthusiastic response to the poems, while Angela seeks physical reassurance that Giovanna is truly present. Ida’s creative work and the sisters’ affection briefly restore a shared childhood world, even though Giovanna recognizes that this past cannot simply be recovered.

Ida also takes part in a conversation about Tonino and Angela’s feelings. When Giovanna encourages Angela to make Tonino look at her in a particular way, Ida remarks that perhaps he is not a man; after Giovanna rejects the suggestion, Ida follows up with a pointed question. The brief exchange shows her speaking with the same teasing candor that marks the girls’ earlier friendship, without resolving the question of Tonino’s feelings.

After Ida fails at school, she meets Giovanna at a park entrance carrying an overfilled black bag. She has grown markedly taller and appears thin and frail, but her account of the setback is confident: she is glad to have failed, wants to leave school, and intends to write. Giovanna reminds her that she too was failed and suffered; Ida draws the distinction herself, saying Giovanna was ashamed while she is not. The contrast makes the same academic outcome mean different things to each girl. For Ida, it becomes a declared break with school and a step toward the literary life she has been describing, although the evidence does not establish what happens to her writing plans afterward.

Narrative Role

Ida functions as both a childhood confidante and an independent interpreter of events. She is not simply a witness to Giovanna’s changing self-image: she answers with a concrete observation, asks clarifying questions about Giovanna’s account of Vittoria, and asserts her own understanding of family identity when rumors threaten to redefine it. Her literary ambition gives her a future-oriented perspective distinct from Giovanna’s shame about failure. The friendship persists through distance and upheaval, but it is not presented as untouched by time; its later warmth includes nostalgia for a shared past that the girls can revive only imperfectly.