Reviews - The Days of Abandonment

2.89k reviews for:

The Days of Abandonment

Elena Ferrante

3.91 AVERAGE

liridona's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

earlyandalone's review against another edition

4.0

This book was a really tough read for me. The first few chapters echoed with a lot of thoughts and feelings I'd had when I experienced my own abandonment, but then Olga, the narrator, loses her grip on reality, literally trapping herself, her two young children, and a sick dog inside their apartment. It's claustrophobic, frenzied, and frantic. Not ideal to read on an airplane, for instance, which I did.

In the end, I enjoyed this book because Ferrante does what she does best: lays out human emotion starkly, free of judgment and sentimentality.

maragtzrbooks's review against another edition

4.5

emotional sad fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Una vez más, Elena Ferrante me cautivó con un relato desgarrador y profundo.

En pocas páginas conocemos un fragmento de la historia de la protagonista, donde sufre el abandono repentino de su pareja; Elena logra retratar a la perfección el dolor del vacío, lo nublado en la soledad y la desconexión que se enmaraña entre el pasado y el presente.

Lo recomiendo muchísimo, aún sí no han leído a la autora, puede ser un gran libro para descubrir su escritura y sus personajes femeninos tan imperfectamente memorables.

ecsena's review against another edition

4.5

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

felt like a lethargic read but in a good way with how the writing just pulls you into the life and mind of a woman who spirals into madness, despair, and existential dread as she navigates through life as an abandoned woman. It’s as if she loses herself. Herself as a wife, as a mother, and as a woman

sirfrankiecrisp's review against another edition

Ferrante, oh Ferrante, in all of its despair, agony - a book of cosmic gravity, a woman's downpour of light. A truly gothic tale, a poetry of excess; a woman unravelling, wilting, withering to domestic atrophy. It is an exhalation, an otherworldly lament; the great storm conjured in abandonment, in its wake, a woman stripped bare, naked, comforted in obsenity, on the precipice ready to fall into oblivion, into Anna's words: "Where am I? What am I doing? Why?". Blinded by the incoming light of the train, a woman destroyed - saved by the timely prick of a lost daughter. In its end, a strangeness, a calmness, rebirthed; red berries in the mountain ash, a clarity in the dawn of past, pathetic suffering.

Now a more sober and sensible attempt. It is easy to choke on Ferrante's words, a consumate modern great. This is a masterful depiction of motherhood and marraige and the inferno it leaves in dark abandon. In its superfluous misery, betwixt reality and unreality, there is the hum of life; the hissing of the broken telephone; the green of parsley on tomato, floating in stagnant dishwater; the bickerings of suburbia, the dog, the children, the mother. This representation of everyday life magnifies Olga's suffering, a shared suffering - that shared lived experience unique to women.

jcurry95's review against another edition

1.0

The book at times was difficult to read. The helplessness, the distractions, and confusion felt by the main character Olga were infuriating to me. The way she treated and thought about her children was also a minus for me. The last portion of the book when she recovers was better and let me finish the book.