YMMV / Where She Has Gone

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: John. Readers are supposed to feel admiration for him reaching out to his daughter, yet he still does little to actually make up for the all the trouble he's caused. In many ways, he's indirectly responsible for most of the major conflicts that occur throughout the trilogy, and all because he wanted a brief moment of sexual satisfaction with a married Italian woman. Just to name a few, he's indirectly responsible for Cristina's social ostracism, her death in childbirth, leaving Vittorio motherless and Rita totally orphaned, Rita's existence causing frequent infighting amongst the extended family because she's the product of an affair, so much that she's adopted by her friend's family, who's father might have predatory feelings for her, Mario's grief over his dead wife's infidelity and subsequent suicide, and the overall depression that Rita and Vittorio have over the course of their lives. With this in mind, instead of trying to make permanent amends with Rita, he abandons her once again at the end.
• The Woobie: Rita, again. Throughout her life she's never had anything she could truly call hers, exaggerated by the fact that she was born on a boat out on the ocean, so she she doesn't even have a homeland. Everything she's ever had was due to others' charity, some grudgingly. The only thing, or rather person she has any claim to is her half-brother Vittorio.