Characters
Maria – The main character and protagonist.
Maria's father – A salesman
Maria's mother - A seamstress.
Boy from Maria's childhood - He was Maria's puppy love, when she was 11 years old. This initial experience encouraged Maria to be bolder with males.
Maria's boyfriend who gave her the first kiss – Later on, this boy flirted with Maria's girlfriend. This motivated Maria to earn a lot of money so that one day she could humiliate him (beside buying a farm for her parents).
Maria's boyfriend to whom she lost her virginity – Maria used him to learn about sex.
Store owner – Maria’s boss. He fell in love with Maria and provided the money for her trip to Rio de Janeiro. He became Maria’s safety net in her future plans.
Maílson – translator / security / agent in Rio de Janeiro, who was the interpreter when Maria met Roger.
Roger – His main interest was to employ beautiful young girls to dance at his club.
Vivian – A cold woman who knew better that the young girls would not get their dream (i.e. adventure, money, husband) while she worked for Roger. She introduced the name “Rue de Berne” to Maria, which is in the red-light district of Geneva.
Arabic boyfriend – Maria’s acquaintance with this man cost her her job at Roger’s club.
Heidi – The woman at the library from where Maria borrowed books.
Maria’s first customer – An Arabic man, who paid 1000 Swiss francs to sleep with her.
The invisible woman – Only Maria could see her. She took the appearance of the Virgin Mary.
Milan – The owner of the “Copacabana” bar, where Maria worked as a prostitute.
Nyah – Prostitute from the Philippines, and Maria’s only female friend at the Copacabana.
Ralf Hart – A successful 29 year old painter with whom Maria secretly falls in love. Ralf has been married twice, but got divorced in both cases because he lost interest in the sexual part of the relationship. He sees Maria as his opportunity to learn about sex once again.
Terence – A wealthy Englishman who introduced Maria to the pleasures of sadomasochism.
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Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)
“Thus we may define the real as that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then to set them in the snarl of the human currents of his time, so that there results an accurate permanent record of a phase of human history.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)