ATDTDA (20): As if her breath, her yearning, 568-569

[Paul Nightingale]

Dally arrives in Venice, and Ch40 begins with another reference to the
Chicago Fair, now "a long time ago". One thinks of her return to Chicago,
"stunned by the immensity, the conglomeration of architectural styles (336).
And then, her first impression of New York ("at last", 337). In Venice, as
in New York and Chicago, the experience is powerful; and now, she is
"certain for the first time in a life on the roll that whatever 'home' had
meant, this [is] older than memory, than the story she thought she knew"
(568). The voice of the tourist is intrusive, quite apart from the
sentiments expressed: she must both relate to spoken English and be
alienated from a version ("vilely mucous") that signifies difference.

Here, "the evening ... would see to this pest and his replicas in their
thousands ..." etc. Cf. the tourists who populate Ch38, as the cause of
Randolph's "melancholy" on 549, or the "[y]oung tourists ... winding up
their season of exemption from care" on 552.

>From Dally the narrative moves on to the Zombinis collectively, and their
successful tour; from here, Dally isn't mentioned for several pages,
somewhat similar to the Kit has been treated in the text. Dally, of course,
isn't a Zombini, so Vincenzo Miserere's comment ("I think once there were
Zombinis around Venice", 569) necessarily alienates her as the British
Accent did. It seems that "Bria ha[s] known about the Venetian Zombinis
since childhood", emphasising Dally's exclusion from the family: This
comment, beginning a new paragraph allows Bria to assert herself, for once
independently of her half-sister.