In this book, Isabella Ducrot evokes and gives voice to three fundamental issues: what it is to be a woman, childhood, and – most important of all – what she terms “ignorance”. These three experiences of alienation, so often intertwined in our culture, are questioned here from a personal perspective. Blending together thoughts, short stories and autobiographical recollections, Isabella Ducrot reveals how the not-knowing of childhood and the age-old exclusion of women from all kinds of cultural or social discourse are not only experiences of estrangement and forms of suffering at being deprived of a voice, they may also offer an unprecedented and privileged gateway to reconquering that voice. The author seems to suggest that if one wishes to understand the intricacies of theological dogma, one must be able to chant it out as if it were a nursery rhyme, savouring its very meaninglessness.

“There is no tomorrow, there is no tomorrow,” runs the whispering refrain at the end of her reflections; her awareness of this fact seems to open the path to irresistible happiness.