Shoes

Lila's family are shoemakers, and midway through the novel she and her brother Rino decide they are going to make a newly-designed, innovative pair of shoes that will become their vehicle towards financial freedom. For both of the siblings, the shoes represent a way out of their little-respect, lower class existence, and also the ability to do and create something amazing.

Car

This novel is filled with characters that 'have not,' and when a character does 'have,' they are lent a sense of power and otherness over the rest of the cast. The Solara brothers are mentioned repeatedly—driving around the neighborhood in their blue coupe—and often they are mentioned in tandem with an ugly wielding of their social position. Later in the story, Stefano Carucci also gets a car, and while on the surface he is a kinder, gentler version of the...