3 ideas
A lonely young schoolteacher in a rented room marries Alberto, an older man she knows is still attached to a married woman, Giovanna. He keeps up the affair through their marriage and the birth and death of their small daughter. The book opens with her shooting him between the eyes with his own revolver, walking out for a coffee, and preparing to go to the police.
Every small slight, unanswered question and evening of indifference then reads as evidence in a case the reader is already building. The violent act turns from a shock into the arithmetic sum of ordinary domestic moments.
A person who marries to escape solitude, knowing the other does not love them, bets that closeness will eventually turn tolerance into love. When it does not, the unreturned attention does not dissolve but hardens: each withheld response is recorded, and dependence turns into a grievance with no outlet. What looks like sudden violence is accumulated need that was never met or acknowledged.