A review by scarfreads
The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

dark reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

i was floored by this book. i think this is a masterpiece of rage, betrayal, grief, and longing. the intense experiences are completely within the narrator's mind (and very few events actually happen), so reading this honestly felt like the literary analogue of an anxiety attack. the way the writing style is shaped by olga's feelings is amazing: the long, almost lyrical sentences she employs when trying to hold it together are at war with the disjointed, fragmentary, falling-apart prose when she is lost to her abandonment.
one moment in particular stood out to me as both an image and an idea.

on the day in august when olga can't get out of her apartment, she tries to turn the key for so long that she eventually resorts to other methods. "i grabbed it solidly between my teeth and tried to make it turn....but i produced no effect, except the impression that, because the rotating movement of my teeth on the key wasn't working, it was finding an outlet in my face, tearing it like a can opener, and my teeth were moving, being unhinged from the foundation of my face, taking with them the nasal septum, an eyebrow, an eye, and revealing the viscid interior of head and throat."

this moment, set alongside the trauma of her marriage ending and the rediscovery of herself as an entity outside her husband, feels almost unbearably raw.
anyway...! what an astonishing book. i will be reading more of her soon.