Some people build whole lives out of what the rest of us discard. The book uses them to ask a broader question about what makes anyone who they are, so the leftovers of others become a test of identity, not only a way to earn a living.
The dump's smell and the city's perfume seem to mark two separate kinds of people. The book suggests the gap between them is smaller than it looks. Those who live off garbage and those who produce it differ less than their surroundings imply.
A society that throws away its waste also decides which people it can throw away. The novel ties the dump to the abandonment of people, for example a teenager left there by the person meant to care for her. It asks who gets treated as disposable, and why.
Even under austerity and extreme violence, women find their own ways to survive and to feel joy. Love and violence, survival and pleasure exist side by side. Hardship does not empty a life of everything but suffering.
The rot of a garbage dump stands in for something rotten in the whole country, not only in one marginal place. Readers report feeling the stench follow them off the page, which suggests the waste is everyone's problem and not only the problem of those who live in it.