Summary

The chapter “The Melody of Adéle” is presented in a different font from the rest of the manuscript, as it is told from a different narrative perspective than any other chapter in the novel. Instead of being told from the regular third-person narration, this chapter is the contents of the manuscript that Anita had written about Adéle’s life. Adéle’s real name was Melody, and she was 29 years old and had lived in Mauritius her entire life when her husband, Ben, and her son, Vicky, died in a sudden car accident. Melody and Ben had met as co-workers, both of them working for a working-class bank, which served citizens who were perhaps financially illiterate. Ben was tremendously invested in the Humanity Movement, or a political organization that rallied against Mauritius...