As to what the girls saw in Fortuni, I suspect it was just because he was different and had a certain air of mystery. Everything else about these girls' lives is very uniform, standard and rigidly controlled, then there's this seemingly unusual element thrown into the mix.
That made total sense to me. Yes, Fortuni didn't have much in the way of universally appealing traits, but his mystery reminded me of a lot of guys that I've seen girls crush on, totally made sense to me.
I'm pretty much with blueeyeddevil on this one, a bit of clarity in ANY of the major themes could've made this is into something really memorable for me. As it was, the story ended, and I just wondered what the hell happened in the end.
There was one line that really drove me nuts for its lack of clarity. It went something like this: "I received another letter from the embassy, which I'd expected, and I accepted the invitation, which I didn't." What does the "Which I didn't" mean, specifically?
-My first reaction was that, she really didn't accept the invitation after all, but then why state two opposites in the same sentence?
-My next reaction was that she accepted the invitation, but didn't EXPECT that she would accept the invitation. But why wouldn't she have expected her own reaction?
-I think what it probably means was that she'd expected the letter, but had NOT expected the letter to be an invitation. But if that's the case, why don't we hear anything about what happens as a result of the invite? So I'm totally not sure of this either.
That line seemed to be trying to be clever in its format, but ended up being totally opaque to me, and at the resolution of the story when I'm trying to get a handle on how things wrapped up in an already vague story.