"Elena Ferrante has planted herself in my brain. I wouldn't have thought that I could relate so completely to a fictional Italian mother of two whose husband leaves her abruptly, sending her into a precipitous psychological tailspin. Turns out I can, though, courtesy of Ferrante. It's a jarring, amazing story whose events take place in a post-trauma moral vacuum. As Olga descends further into the abyss her maternal instincts fall away, and she alternatively terrifies and disappoints herself, risking not only her own well-being but also that of her children. Every successive detail of her implosion follows believably from the last until we're left with a picture of self-discovery arrived at the hard way. Imagine Dosteyevsky's narrator from Notes from the Underground with dependents."
Publisher Europa Editions
Publication Date 2005-09-01
Section Fiction / All Staff Suggestions / Fiction Suggestions / Greg G.
Format Paperback
ISBN 9781933372006
"She is among the greatest Italian authors of recent years."-Corriere della Sera "Ferrante dissects the personal microcosm so well, and with awesome lucidity and precision shows us the meanderings of a woman's mind, the suffering that accompanies being abandoned, and the awful rumbling of time passing."-El Mundo "Elena Ferrante has given us a startlingly beautiful novel of exceptional and bold strength."-Il Manifesto "Severe and rigorously unsentimental, packed full of passages written with dizzying intensity at a rare and acute pitch. Ferrante is at her best when her writing holds tight to those nagging, niggling obsessions that make up our mental landscapes."-La Stampa A national bestseller for almost an entire year, The Days of Abandonment shocked and captivated its Italian public when first published. It is the gripping story of a woman's descent into devastating emptiness after being abandoned by her husband with two young children to care for. When she finds herself literally trapped within the four walls of their high-rise apartment, she is forced to confront her ghosts, the potential loss of her own identity, and the possibility that life may never return to normal.
