“Who is she, this mocking Madame Bovary, staring all day at her carpets? This Italian suburban supermodel, catwalking the white surgical aisles of hypermarkets in Frankfurt. Clasping soap powder and pâté to her beautiful breasts as if they were Oscars.”
– Deborah Levy, The Unloved

“‘There are days’, she says, ‘when I stare into the carpet. We have a lot of carpet in our house in Frankfurt because it is very big. I imported it from Rome. It is blue, the blue of the Mediterranean.’ She stops, as if to measure the effect of her words on the provincial Detective Inspctor. ‘There are days’, she repeats, ‘when I do nothing but stare into the carpet. There are places, near the television set for example, where the blue deepens and I am sucked, abducted, into its dark centre. I am an alien in my own home, floating through the hyperspace of one hundred per cent wool.'”
– Deborah Levy, The Unloved