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A review by kairhone
The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Infidelity, and Pregnancy