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slowshows 's review for:
The Days of Abandonment
by Elena Ferrante
"What was I? A woman worn out by four months of tension and grief; not, surely, a witch who, out of desperation, secretes a poison that can give a fever to her male child, kill a domestic animal, put a telephone line out of order, ruin the mechanism of a reinforced door lock."
yeah this was good. i doubted it for the first half, mainly because i felt like i was in no way the target audience, that maybe i would appreciate this better if i had any of our narrator's - olga's - lived experiences, if i was older, married or had children. but i was wrong. as soon as olga reaches her breaking point, or the "absence of sense" as she puts it, the book opens up in remarkable ways. ferrante definitely has themes and subjects that are repeated regularly in her work (or what i've read of it), but she manages to ascribe them new meaning, turning them inside out in different ways. the entire episode when gianni is sick, the dog is poisoned, olga is losing sense of herself, and they discover they are locked in felt nauseating, i felt like i was there with them, experiencing the same anxiety, the same absence of my sense of self. i loved in this chapters little details added to prove this unmaking of the self, with olga starting to refer to herself in third person, no longer narrating in first person.
as with the neapolitan series, i think the days of abandonment has a very banal premise - olga's husband, mario, leaves her for another woman, and as she struggles to make sense of this new life, olga feels that she is losing sense of reality, and falls into a sort of abyss. however, i feel that despite the banality of the premise, it is olga's rich inner life - her need to make sense of what is happening to her, who she is in this new context, destroy herself and everything around her, then put herself back together - that make the book so fascinating to me.
i still feel, overall, that i might appreciate this better in ten years time, but it was really good. i was afraid to start another ferrante book after how much i loved the neapolitan series, mainly in fear that it wouldn't live up to those books (and it doesn't, really, but it's also a much shorter, more pointed book) or that i would feel the need to constantly compare them - which didn't happen.
yeah this was good. i doubted it for the first half, mainly because i felt like i was in no way the target audience, that maybe i would appreciate this better if i had any of our narrator's - olga's - lived experiences, if i was older, married or had children. but i was wrong. as soon as olga reaches her breaking point, or the "absence of sense" as she puts it, the book opens up in remarkable ways. ferrante definitely has themes and subjects that are repeated regularly in her work (or what i've read of it), but she manages to ascribe them new meaning, turning them inside out in different ways. the entire episode when gianni is sick, the dog is poisoned, olga is losing sense of herself, and they discover they are locked in felt nauseating, i felt like i was there with them, experiencing the same anxiety, the same absence of my sense of self. i loved in this chapters little details added to prove this unmaking of the self, with olga starting to refer to herself in third person, no longer narrating in first person.
as with the neapolitan series, i think the days of abandonment has a very banal premise - olga's husband, mario, leaves her for another woman, and as she struggles to make sense of this new life, olga feels that she is losing sense of reality, and falls into a sort of abyss. however, i feel that despite the banality of the premise, it is olga's rich inner life - her need to make sense of what is happening to her, who she is in this new context, destroy herself and everything around her, then put herself back together - that make the book so fascinating to me.
i still feel, overall, that i might appreciate this better in ten years time, but it was really good. i was afraid to start another ferrante book after how much i loved the neapolitan series, mainly in fear that it wouldn't live up to those books (and it doesn't, really, but it's also a much shorter, more pointed book) or that i would feel the need to constantly compare them - which didn't happen.