Aldabra Quotes

“My grandmother always dressed in white, summer and winter. She had come to Venice from England at twenty years old and instantly ‘fell like a ripe apple’ into the arms of a worker at the shipyard -he became my mother’s father.”

In Venice, Italy, ten-year-old Elisa finds she must deal with all the unexpected consequences of her beloved eccentric grandmother’s transformation into a giant Aldabra tortoise, native to a small group of coral islands in the Seychelles.

A family secret, a miraculous transformation, an Internet stranger, a friendly American scientist, and a girl with the strength to make it all come out right.

“The way to outsmart death, Elisa dear, is to turn into something else, says Elisa’s grandmother, an actress with a flair for the dramatic. But when it seems as if Nonna might actually be changing literally, Elisa must uncover a series of mysteries.”

“After a moment of suspense, my grandmother would grasp my hands and, in a whisper scented with jasmine and spices, start telling me her favorite legend. That was six years ago, but still, to this day, if I recall the delicate, aromatic fragrance that floated

“And yet isn’t it strange, I though that day. Mamma never comes with me. Doesn’t she ever think it might be dangerous? Hasn’t she seen how wild and isolated is out there? No, that was the point. She’d never seen it. All of sudden two thoughts were colliding in my head.”

“What secret rule could be keeping Nonna and Mamma, mother and daughter, from seeing each other? What was it that I didn’t know? Whenever I got back home, Mamma would interrogate me about Nonna Eia’s health. She bombarded me with questions, sometimes embarrassing ones. Like, ‘Did she have a strange smell? Are you sure she’s keeping clean?”

“She turned her back and put the water on to boil. But not before I got a glimpse of her lips tightening. An ugly grimace. My sugar-and-spice grandmother with such a nasty look. I feel guilty. But I couldn’t ask, Nanna, do you and Mamma hate each other? How could I say such a thing?”

″...when I caught sight of the Casermette. A few of these narrow row houses were lived in, with small, well-kept gardens full of roses. But in most of them, the windows had been barred for years and there were brambles outside, not roses. ”

“Right opposite the hull of the boat was Nonna Eia’s front door, made of wooden planks, once upon a time turquoise-blue. It was framed by great cluster of sprawling, clinging vines, as tangled as a jungle, that grew so densely over the drainpipes and along the walls of the house that they hid the upstairs windows, whose broken panes were held together by the strips of masking tape.”