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reading this, i thought, i wonder if my mother feels like this. and then, i hope she doesn't. and then, my mother is so nice. and so am i. and i know that i think terrible, nasty things (and for a period of my life, i thought terrible things about her, and frequently). so she must be the same.
it didn't matter if i liked leda, or agreed with her thoughts or her actions, because she was written in a way that made me feel like i understood. i don't know. it always feels strange to read from the perspective of mothers on their daughters - because i have one and am one, respectively, and i am aware that i don't have the kind of access to my mother's world as i do those of my friends or anyone who didn't raise me, and i may never know what she thinks of me, or how it has changed her to have me. and i feel sorry that i will always know her as a mother first and a person second.
while i was reading this, it felt so very vivid, and now i feel already like i don't remember it as well as i should. maybe that's most books? maybe it's that what seems important to remember isn't the plot points but leda's passing thoughts, which are harder to hold on to despite cutting deep when i read them.
this isn't about the book's main themes but i did want to put these two quotes side by side:
"I had always considered sex an ultimate sticky reality, the least mediated contact possible with another body. Instead, after that experience, I was convinced that sex is an extreme product of the imagination."
And this, from "Eurydice" by Ocean Vuong:
"Silly me. I thought love was real / & the body imaginary."
Now that they're together, I don't know if they have as much to discuss with each other as I thought. But I went to the trouble of typing them out, so I'm not getting rid of them now.

elizabstevensx's review against another edition

3.75

dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Ferrante’s style is so addictive and this one was strange and complicated. Felt like being a fly on the wall where motive is assumed but really the plot is driven by a woman who just fucks things up for the heck of having free will/agency. Interesting characters and dynamics and conversations on female agency and motherhood.

cinoca's review against another edition

3.0

Still digesting this one and not sure how I feel about it. Its not a bad book, I just didn’t seem to care about the characters or their stories, or just felt uncomfortable… not sure.

dani_ringrose's review against another edition

5.0

Oh man. This book solidified everything I wanted to turn my own main character into. A complicated mess of a mother who battles with herself wanting anything but the motherhood ascribed to her.

I'd seen the film first and am genuinely surprised at how well it captures the unlikability of the narrator, and in Olivia Coleman's hands, develops it even further.

Women who grow and push against Type, who suffer against the roles they and society give them. I yearn for more literature like this.

"In the first year of Marta's life I discovered that I no longer loved my husband. A hard year, the baby barely slept and wouldn't let me sleep. Physical tiredness is a magnifying glass. I was too tired to study, to think, to laugh, to cry, to love that man who was too intelligent, too stubbornly involved in his wager with life, too absent. Love requires energy. I had none."

"You know how children are, sometimes they love you by cuddling you, other time by trying to remake you from the start, reinvent you, as if they thought you were badly brought up and they had to teach you how to get on in the world, what music to listen to, what books to read, what films to see, the words you should use and those you shouldn't because they're old now, no one says that anymore."