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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
Somoso ocasiões. Consumimos e perdemos a vida porque um qualquer, em tempos longíquos, por vontade de descarregar o pau dentro de nós, foi gentil, nos escolheu entre as mulheres
Levitar. Queria sair do chão, queria que me visse suspensa em equilíbrio, elevada, como acontece com as coisas integralmente boas. [...] Pensava a beleza como um esforço constante de apagamento da corporalidade. Queria que amasse meu corpo esquecendo o sabor que carregam os corpos. Ou talvez não. Talvez tenha sido eu que tenha acreditado que o amor dele precisasse daquela minha obsessão.
Elena Ferrante você é um monstro e eu te amo até quando eu te odeio.
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
El relato del delirio dostoevskano de Olga, mujer, madre y esposa, que recuerda mucho a la Elena adulta de la Amiga Estupenda. Novela psicológica sobre el fin de un amor y sus consecuencias. Final necesario para una novela tan densa. 4,5 - pero siendo Elena Ferrante, 5.
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
We support women's rights but also women's wrongs.✨
The issue of Mario being a groomer should have been properly acknowledged but other than that, I don't really have any complaints. Maybe I would have related to Olga more if I was a mother or if I had experienced a break up. Olga's feelings are valid, too often we take mothers and motherhood for granted. (I do not condone all her actions but I understand where they come from)
The issue of Mario being a groomer should have been properly acknowledged but other than that, I don't really have any complaints. Maybe I would have related to Olga more if I was a mother or if I had experienced a break up. Olga's feelings are valid, too often we take mothers and motherhood for granted. (I do not condone all her actions but I understand where they come from)
Content Warnings
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Child abuse, Infidelity, Sexual content, Medical content, Abandonment
Minor: Animal cruelty, Pedophilia, Violence, Vomit, Injury/Injury detail
its so sad… stopped reading for exams i just could not bear picking it up again .. in this weather….
What a ride. I didn't really know what was happenign most of the time, but boy did I love it. Olga is insane, how did her kids stay alive during this? I liked the way this toyed with my emotions, it was unnervingly nice.
4.25
*edit* I haven't seen many trigger warnings mentioning this - there's a relationship with a big age gap moderately described in the book ( grooming).*edit*
Elena Ferrante has a unique way of portraying womanhood. The days of abandonment is a great example of that.
What moved me the most in this piece was realising how unreliable the main character is as a narrator. I started this story by feeling sorry for her, even understanding her extreme and furious actions. As time progressed, I found fewer arguments to back up her narcissism and manipulation of people around her.
You end this novel with a bittersweet taste in your mouth, unsure how to feel about it. Did she actually move on?
*edit* I haven't seen many trigger warnings mentioning this - there's a relationship with a big age gap moderately described in the book ( grooming).*edit*
Elena Ferrante has a unique way of portraying womanhood. The days of abandonment is a great example of that.
What moved me the most in this piece was realising how unreliable the main character is as a narrator. I started this story by feeling sorry for her, even understanding her extreme and furious actions. As time progressed, I found fewer arguments to back up her narcissism and manipulation of people around her.
You end this novel with a bittersweet taste in your mouth, unsure how to feel about it. Did she actually move on?
One of those books that requires you to be in a particular frame of mind and I don’t think that was me!
I appreciated the writing. Olga was deeply, incredibly frustrating as a protagonist in a way that was so purposeful. I was as anxious and irritated with her behaviour as she was with herself.
I think coming back to this as a mother or after heartbreak might make this more defining. I struggled to get through as it was, but it picked up again towards the end when the tension seemed to relax.
It was affecting and it was meaningful, I just think it wasn’t quite right for me.
I appreciated the writing. Olga was deeply, incredibly frustrating as a protagonist in a way that was so purposeful. I was as anxious and irritated with her behaviour as she was with herself.
I think coming back to this as a mother or after heartbreak might make this more defining. I struggled to get through as it was, but it picked up again towards the end when the tension seemed to relax.
It was affecting and it was meaningful, I just think it wasn’t quite right for me.
"I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned."
Earlier this year I read, and utterly adored, Ties by Domenico Starnone. Many speculate the woman behind Ferrante is his wife, some have even guessed it is him who writes under the pseudonym. Maybe we'll never find out, but nevertheless, Ties kept coming to my mind in this potentially related, emotional novel, The Days of Abandonment.
One of the scariest things about love is that it can end in an instant. For our protagonist, Olga, this reality becomes painfully clear one afternoon after lunch. That is when her husband, Mario, tells her he is going to leave her. The downward spiral that is her life from thereon sets into motion, as Olga, mother of two, a woman pushing 40, tries to wrap her head around the fact that the marriage she has built her life upon is now over.
Nobody that I have read before writes women like Ferrante. There is such fervor, such rage, the kind I recognise in myself and I'm sure lots of women recognise in themselves, yet hidden behind a softness, some of it real, some of it learned from society's expectations of how women should be. It is so refreshing, time and time again, to see Ferrante peel this mask off her female characters, to shatter these walls. Olga learns, while learning to be without her husband, that she is allowed to be a woman of her own agency, a woman of her own making. Sometimes, that woman is not likable, and there are moments in this book where I utterly hated Olga, moments where I thought she was doing something bad. In those moments I realised that it does not matter what I think of Olga, it matters what she thinks of herself. And she was happy, now, more than ever, when she stopped catering to other people's needs.
While plot drives this, as well as Ferrante's other novels, strongly forward, there is no way to dismiss the magic of her prose. She crafts a sentence like no other, they are so subtle and can take you on a journey with just a few words. She knows how to elicit a reaction in her readers, while never falling into the trap of telling and not showing. There is really something special about someone who can take some of the most mundane things of our daily lives and turn them into spectacles. As a reader, I'm inspired by her way of looking at the world, of finding so much depth and meaning in daily endeavors.