3 ideas
On the first floor, Arnon and his wife Ayelet leave their small daughter Ofri with Herman, an elderly neighbour in early dementia, who wanders off with the girl. The two are found, but no one can say what happened in between. Arnon becomes convinced Herman harmed her, and the unanswerable gap grows into an obsession that damages his marriage and leads to his own reckless acts.
The building is arranged along Freud's model of the psyche. The first floor is the id, driven by impulse, fear and aggression; the second is the ego, caught between desire and reality; the third is the superego, governed by law, principle and judgment. Each floor's crisis shows what goes wrong when one agency of the mind takes over a life.
Devora, a retired judge, lived by strict legal and moral standards and would not bend them for her own son. The result was a long estrangement she only begins to question after her husband dies. The novel argues that the superego's integrity, applied without mercy, can cost the relationships it was meant to protect.