Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
In typical Ferrante fashion, examines the difficult (impossible) balance of motherhood and self. There's some seeds of later Ferrante novels (such as dissolving). Not enjoyable and often painful as the narrator's hurtful decisions and actions (described without apology) hurt others - frequently children.
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Kind of enjoyed reading it. Uncomfortable, thinking about the main character Leda and her own reflections on leaving her daughters, when they were young. No contact. Nothing. Taking a young childѓ??s favourite doll, seems part of her own need for an attachment. Mother daughter relationships, are always described as difficult and she is aware of her own difficult relationship she has with her own mother and the constant threat her mum would make about leaving, but never following through with this action.
an engaging take on woman and motherhood, touching on the regrets of lost independence
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Yes
An interesting and often looked over look at motherhood. Like most of Ferrante’s work it was incredibly well written and asks some of the hard questions. This is after i've read three of neopolitan books but i would definitely recommend to read this before the series. easy to see why her books are selling of the shelves!
my first novel by Elena Ferrante. it's dark, thoughtful, honest. It focuses on Leda, a reluctant mother, maybe even regretful mother. Her two daughters live in Canada near their father. While on vacation, she sees a family at the beach one day. They lose their daughter and Leda finds her but walks off with the girl's doll in her bag. She doesn't return it right away. The girl's distraught without it.
passages I particularly liked:
"I left at sunset as usual, but tense and resentful."
"I felt the need to hear the sound of my voice, to get it under control with the help of someone else's voice."
"There had been small alarming episodes, not normal impulses of depression, not a destructiveness expressed symbolically, but something more."
"Men, even before exchanging a kiss, made it clear to me, with polite conviction, that they had no intention of leaving their wives, or that they had the habits of a bachelor and wouldn't give them up, or that they ruled out taking responsibility for my life and that of my daughters."
passages I particularly liked:
"I left at sunset as usual, but tense and resentful."
"I felt the need to hear the sound of my voice, to get it under control with the help of someone else's voice."
"There had been small alarming episodes, not normal impulses of depression, not a destructiveness expressed symbolically, but something more."
"Men, even before exchanging a kiss, made it clear to me, with polite conviction, that they had no intention of leaving their wives, or that they had the habits of a bachelor and wouldn't give them up, or that they ruled out taking responsibility for my life and that of my daughters."
Thoughts and perspectives from a mother that might never be revealed were it not for Elena Ferrante writing this character. The thoughts you'd rather not confess or let anyone else know about, for fear of judgement. But we are human and we have our thoughts, even if they seem taboo and "unmotherly," without compassion or empathy, but at the same time, full of both, for the self that can get lost in motherhood.
"My daughters would have liked him, especially Marta, who fell in love easily with lean, nervous boys. As for me, who knows. I realized long ago that I've held onto little of myself and everything of them. Even now, I was looking at Gino through the filter of Bianca's experiences, of Marta's, according to the tastes and passions I imagine as theirs." pg. 16-17
"But I loved them all, my daughters' first boyfriends, I bestowed on them an exaggerated affection. I wanted to reward them, perhaps, because they had recognized the beauty, the good qualities of my daughters, and so had freed them from the anguish of being ugly, the certainty of having no power of seduction. Or I wanted to reward them because they had providentially saved me, too, from bad moods and conflicts and complaints and attempts to soothe my daughters: I'm ugly, I'm fat; but I, too, felt ugly and fat at your age; no, you weren't ugly and fat, you were beautiful; you, too, are beautiful, you don't even realize how people look at you; they're not looking at us, they're looking at you." pg. 51
"If Gino had met Bianca and Marta, I wondered almost out of habit, which of the two would he have liked more. Since my daughters' early adolescence, I had had this passion for comparing them with their friends, close friends, classmates who were considered pretty, who were successful. In a confused way I felt that they were rivals of the two girls, as if the others' exceptional self-confidence, seductiveness, grace, intelligence took something away from my daughters and, in some obscure way, from me. I controlled myself, I spoke kindly, yet I tended to demonstrate silently to myself that they were all less pretty or, if prety, unlikable, empty, and I would list the quirks, the stupidities, the temporary defects of those growing bodies. Sometimes, when I saw Bianca or Marta suffer because they felt outdone, I couldn't resist, I intervened rudely with their friends who were too extroverted, too attractive, too ingratiating." pg. 57
"But my anxieties didn't disappear. I observed my daughters when they weren't paying attention. I felt for them a complicated alternation of sympathy and antipathy. Bianca, I sometimes thought, is unlikable, and I suffered for her. Then I discovered that she was much loved. She had girl and boy friends, and I felt that it was only I, her mother, who found her unlikable, and was remorseful. I didn't like her dismissive laugh. I didn't like her eagerness to always claim more than others: at the table, for example, she took more food than everyone else, not to eat it but to be sure of not missing anything, of not being neglected or cheated. I didn't like her stubborn silence when she felt she was wrong but couldn't admit her mistake.
You're like that, too, my husband told me. Maybe it was true, what seemed to me unlikable in Bianca was only the reflection of an antipathy I felt for myself. Or no, it wasn't so simple, things were more tangled. Even when I recognized in the two girls what I considered my own good qualities I felt that something wasn't right. I had the impression that they didn't know how to make good use of those qualities, that the best part of me ended up in their bodies as a mistaken graft, a parody, and I was angry, ashamed." pg. 60
"Poor creatures who came out of my belly, all alone now on the other side of the world." pg. 62
"How foolish to think you can tell your children about yourself before they're at least fifty. To ask to be seen by them as a person and not as a function. To say: I am your history, you begin from me, listen to me, it could be useful to you. Nina, on the other hand--I am not Nina's history, Nina could even see me as a future. Choose for your companion an alien daughter. Look for her, approach her." pg. 80
"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 left. When he began with caresses and kisses, I became anxious, I felt that I was a stimulus abused for his solitary pleasures." pg. 81
"Males always have something pathetic about them, at every age. A fragile arrogance, a frightened audacity. I no longer know, today, if they ever aroused in me love or only an affectionate sympathy for their weaknesses." pg. 104
"Time goes by, I said, it carries off their little bodies, they remain only in the memory of your arms." pg. 107
"You know how children are, sometimes they love you by cuddling you, other times 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.
'They think they know more than we do,' Giovanni confirmed.
'Sometimes it's true,' I said, 'because to what we've taught them they add what they learn outside of us, in their time, which is always different--it's not ours.'" pg. 107
"'Why did you leave your daughters?'
I thought, searching for an answer that might help her.
'I loved them too much and it seemed to me that love for them would keep me from becoming myself.'" pg. 117
"Elena would be happy to have her doll again, I said to myself. Or no, a child never wants only what it's asking for, in fact a satisfied demand makes even more unbearable the need that has not been confessed." pg. 128
Book: borrowed from SSF Main Library.
"My daughters would have liked him, especially Marta, who fell in love easily with lean, nervous boys. As for me, who knows. I realized long ago that I've held onto little of myself and everything of them. Even now, I was looking at Gino through the filter of Bianca's experiences, of Marta's, according to the tastes and passions I imagine as theirs." pg. 16-17
"But I loved them all, my daughters' first boyfriends, I bestowed on them an exaggerated affection. I wanted to reward them, perhaps, because they had recognized the beauty, the good qualities of my daughters, and so had freed them from the anguish of being ugly, the certainty of having no power of seduction. Or I wanted to reward them because they had providentially saved me, too, from bad moods and conflicts and complaints and attempts to soothe my daughters: I'm ugly, I'm fat; but I, too, felt ugly and fat at your age; no, you weren't ugly and fat, you were beautiful; you, too, are beautiful, you don't even realize how people look at you; they're not looking at us, they're looking at you." pg. 51
"If Gino had met Bianca and Marta, I wondered almost out of habit, which of the two would he have liked more. Since my daughters' early adolescence, I had had this passion for comparing them with their friends, close friends, classmates who were considered pretty, who were successful. In a confused way I felt that they were rivals of the two girls, as if the others' exceptional self-confidence, seductiveness, grace, intelligence took something away from my daughters and, in some obscure way, from me. I controlled myself, I spoke kindly, yet I tended to demonstrate silently to myself that they were all less pretty or, if prety, unlikable, empty, and I would list the quirks, the stupidities, the temporary defects of those growing bodies. Sometimes, when I saw Bianca or Marta suffer because they felt outdone, I couldn't resist, I intervened rudely with their friends who were too extroverted, too attractive, too ingratiating." pg. 57
"But my anxieties didn't disappear. I observed my daughters when they weren't paying attention. I felt for them a complicated alternation of sympathy and antipathy. Bianca, I sometimes thought, is unlikable, and I suffered for her. Then I discovered that she was much loved. She had girl and boy friends, and I felt that it was only I, her mother, who found her unlikable, and was remorseful. I didn't like her dismissive laugh. I didn't like her eagerness to always claim more than others: at the table, for example, she took more food than everyone else, not to eat it but to be sure of not missing anything, of not being neglected or cheated. I didn't like her stubborn silence when she felt she was wrong but couldn't admit her mistake.
You're like that, too, my husband told me. Maybe it was true, what seemed to me unlikable in Bianca was only the reflection of an antipathy I felt for myself. Or no, it wasn't so simple, things were more tangled. Even when I recognized in the two girls what I considered my own good qualities I felt that something wasn't right. I had the impression that they didn't know how to make good use of those qualities, that the best part of me ended up in their bodies as a mistaken graft, a parody, and I was angry, ashamed." pg. 60
"Poor creatures who came out of my belly, all alone now on the other side of the world." pg. 62
"How foolish to think you can tell your children about yourself before they're at least fifty. To ask to be seen by them as a person and not as a function. To say: I am your history, you begin from me, listen to me, it could be useful to you. Nina, on the other hand--I am not Nina's history, Nina could even see me as a future. Choose for your companion an alien daughter. Look for her, approach her." pg. 80
"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 left. When he began with caresses and kisses, I became anxious, I felt that I was a stimulus abused for his solitary pleasures." pg. 81
"Males always have something pathetic about them, at every age. A fragile arrogance, a frightened audacity. I no longer know, today, if they ever aroused in me love or only an affectionate sympathy for their weaknesses." pg. 104
"Time goes by, I said, it carries off their little bodies, they remain only in the memory of your arms." pg. 107
"You know how children are, sometimes they love you by cuddling you, other times 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.
'They think they know more than we do,' Giovanni confirmed.
'Sometimes it's true,' I said, 'because to what we've taught them they add what they learn outside of us, in their time, which is always different--it's not ours.'" pg. 107
"'Why did you leave your daughters?'
I thought, searching for an answer that might help her.
'I loved them too much and it seemed to me that love for them would keep me from becoming myself.'" pg. 117
"Elena would be happy to have her doll again, I said to myself. Or no, a child never wants only what it's asking for, in fact a satisfied demand makes even more unbearable the need that has not been confessed." pg. 128
Book: borrowed from SSF Main Library.
dark
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I did not get the point of this book and couldn't relate to the main character at all. And what is her fascination with dolls? And yet another character named Elena.