Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - Nő a sötétben

Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

Nő a sötétben by Elena Ferrante

9 reviews

littlelotto's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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isabezza's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective slow-paced

3.5

Elena Ferrante is an author who has been on my radar for a while now, and I have a few of her books on my TBR. Although this shorter story was not quite what I expected, Ferrante's writing certainly inspired emotional, horrific reactions, dark themes and descriptions. I was particularly enraptured by our complicated main character. For example, her tragic story and internal monologue puts the reader in a position of understanding some of the bad and cruel behaviours from the main character's past. The ending is simultaneously shocking and predictable.
That said, this story is not for readers who enjoy a fast paced plot. The dual timeline (where Lena narrates her past and her present) involves more character development and emotion than action which could make the reading slow for some.

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jaiari12's review against another edition

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reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

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cady_sass's review against another edition

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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? Yes

3.75

It’s difficult for me to fairly rate this book because I inadvertently watched the film before reading, not realizing it had been a novel first, when I prefer to & always try to read the original work before watching any film. I feel that if I hadn’t watched the movie first I would’ve rated this lower. I was able to invision these characters, who were quite brilliantly portrayed in the movie, and to fill in gaps in description and prose that this translation leaves to be desired. I’m sure that the original Spanish is closer to what I would’ve expected going into this- a painful, cringe inducing, car-crash of a situation between a brilliant but cold academic woman who abandoned her children at a young age to pursue self identity and a young mother struggling with her own daughter and identity. It’s quite remarkable at its core but the English prose (again, I assume due to the translation, which is ironic because the protagonist is a translator by trade) is dry and abrupt.

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kairhone's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I realized long ago that I've held on to little of myself and everything of them [daughters].

A woman's body does a thousand different things, toils, runs, studies, fantasizes, invents, wearies, and meanwhile the breasts enlarge, the lips of the sex swell, the flesh throbs with with round life that is yours, your life, and yet pushes elsewhere, draws away from you although it inhabits your belly, joyful and weighty, felt as a greedy impulse and yet repellent like an insect's poison injected into a vein.

I was screaming with rage like my mother, because of the crushing weight of responsibility, the bond that strangles, and with my free arm, I dragged my firstborn, yelling, you'll pay for this.

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 a function.

[Idealizing the past] it seemed a way to convince onself that there is always a slender branch of one's life to hang on to, and, by being suspended there, get used to the inevitablility of falling.

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