The Days of Abandonment

The Days of Abandonment

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3.91 of 5 stars 3.91  ·  rating details  ·  523 ratings  ·  112 reviews
"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...more
Paperback, 188 pages
Published September 1st 2005 by Europa Editions (first published 2002)
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Elizabeth
Dec 21, 2010 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Sylvia Plath
Shelves: 2010, in-italy, reviewed
At one point I thought to abandon this book. It was really her or me. We were climbing a mountain together, she had lost her hold and was dangling, and I was making the decision to cut the rope or not. I almost did it. I had the knife in my hand. But would you do that to another person?

I couldn't. Not here. When I realized that I just couldn't go any further into the descent with Ferrante's character, I realized that I was thinking of her as a real person, someone who was experiencing the worst...more
Pollopicu
This is a simple yet profound novel about abandonment and grief. I can tell Elena didn't write this to get a sensational reaction from her readers. I can also tell she didn't make any of it up. Knowing that Ferrante has shunned public attention and has managed to keep her real identity concealed from her readers confirms this for me.
When I heard about this story I knew I had to read it to judge it for myself. I know what pain and abandonment feels like. I knew I had to read it to be able to ver...more
Dian Pranasari
Suatu hari pada bulan April, tepat pada saat Olga dan suaminya, Mario, sedang membereskan meja seusai makan siang, Mario mengemukakan keinginannya untuk berpisah. Perkawinan yang sudah mereka jalani selama lima belas tahun pun runtuh ...

Secara keseluruhan, tema yang ditawarkan The Days of Abandonment memang sangat sederhana, berkutat dengan kehidupan seorang istri yang ditinggalkan suaminya. Tak lebih. Namun, Ferrante menggambarkannya dengan sangat transparan dan intens, ia menolak eufemisme at...more
Susan
No one knows who Elena Ferrante is, which is lucky, because the graphic venom poured out in this novel is so intense that it seems to be born of experience. Olga is 38, a native Neapolitan living in Turin with their two children, when her ambitious husband Mario leaves her for a much younger woman. The basic plot of the abandoned foreign woman is mythic, reminiscent of Euripides' Medea. Here is Olga, a literary professional who has given up everything for love, and who expresses her unlimited ha...more
Nick
I picked up Elena Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment’ absent-mindedly while in McNally Jackson in Soho. At first it seemed an unlikely choice. A book about a Neapolitan woman living in Turin who is told by her husband that he is leaving her for another woman.

This news is devastating enough for any person but for the heroine of Ferrante’s novel it is cataclysmic and sends her into a spiral of hatred fear and self-loathing.

What’s makes the book so fascinating is its coruscating honesty and passion...more
Eugene
i let three trains pass on the platform so i could finish it. POV of a scorned bourgeoise. horror episodes of her total fury in sentences that sear and become beautiful. other times : accurate, intimate and desolate portraits of a broken self. a carefully balanced, patient plot that's worth battling through its accurate depiction of thick monotonous depression. but despite its extreme emotions, not manipulative or fantastic. in those contemporary fictions with similarly traditional ambitions, fe...more
Stephen
This novel is an unsparing, sometimes brutal, portrayal of psychological collapse. When the female narrator's husband suddenly abandons her and their two children for a younger woman, she learns that her sense of self is so completely interwoven with her estranged husband that she can find no new, solid footing. In fact, even as she finally begins to put herself back together again, speaking very, very relatively, she realizes that the disentanglement she seeks is ultimately impossible. Looking...more
Tony
Ferrante, Elena. THE DAYS OF ABANDONMENT. (2002; U>S-2005). ****. Ferrante is one of Italy’s most important and acclaimed contemporary writers. The jacket summary does an excellent job in recapping this novel. To quote: “One April afternoon, right after lunch, my husband announced that he wanted to leave me. He did it while we were clearing the table...” This is the first sentence of her novel. “This compelling novel that shocked audiences in Europe with its unsentimental and unyielding depic...more
Gina Rheault
When my beloved spouse leaves, who am I? Olga, thrown off kilter, a deck of cards identity toppled, pieces scattered about, loses her bearings even though she is now the primary caretaker of two impressionable young children who sense that something is wrong with Mamma. Mamma is dangerous, not dealing, off somewhere, and she is not reliable or safe. How awful for a child. And its no picnic for Olga who has never gotten a stable sense of herself either before marriage or in marriage, who obsesses...more
Robert Blumenthal
This is truly a searing novel, one that grabs you emotionally and doesn't let go until nearly the very end. Olga, a thirty-eight year old mother of two, is abandoned abruptly by her husband of 15 years, leaving her for a much younger woman. She becomes appropriately distraught, having difficulty navigating the routines of everyday living (cleaning, cooking, taking care of her children). She becomes effected emotionally, mentally and physically, culminating in an absolute day of utter hell. This...more
Diane
Lately, I've found myself returning to authors that I've enjoyed in the past. Elena Ferrant is one of these authors. Here is my review of her book, The Lost Daughter, in case you missed it previously. In The Days of Abandonment, the title pretty much says it all. A short novel (188 pages) but, with a story, and an intro that packs a wallop.

"One April afternoon, right after lunch, my husband announced that he wanted to leave me. He did it while we were clearing the table; the children were quarre...more
Stacey
There was something so compelling about this book that left me scrambling to finish it. Not because I thought that the narrative had any big revelations to provide me, but I just had to see it through to the bitter end.

I originally picked this up, intrigued by the title, and persuaded by the blurb that claimed that "rarely have the foundations on which our ideas of motherhood and womanhood rest been so candidly questioned". And certainly this is true. Olga is a woman who is, understandably, fal...more
Marzia Bianchi
Extremely depressing Italian novel about a woman's decent into madness and recovery after her husband leaves her. Very compelling and well written.
Jessica Alverson
Awesome, but terribly emotional and requires a good frame of mind to read. Prose is great, but very intense.
Reid
Nov 22, 2012 Reid rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: women (and men) on the verge
This novel could easily be called The Disillusionment of Olga, or The Loss of Meaning. It describes a woman’s plunge into the depths of that loss due to her abandonment by her husband, and results in the loss of all meaning as she’s known it, and hence her own self-abandonment. This is crucial and explains why she becomes completely unhinged personally, and why she reacts so strongly. The self-abandon (physical and mental) and the woman’s rage is described with grim, explicit, and credible detai...more
Bethany
I understand that the author is a mystery and there is speculation whether the author is actually a man. That caused me to read the book more critically for language and tone. Some might consider the actions and thoughts of the narrator to be so extreme as to be improbable but I thought them believable in the context of the circumstances. It is a book that often has one worried and aghast for the narrators slow-motion tumble down the stairs of despair, depression and desperation; one constantly...more
Roya
This was the first Elena Ferrante book that I have read, and I will definitely read her other novels. She writes with raw emotion and honesty. She writes all the things that women think, but that we may be afraid to express because it's not politically correct, makes people uncomfortable, and because it's "unladylike." Olga's spiral downward following her husband's abandonment after 15 years of marriage reminded me of my mother's experience, as well as the experience of some of my friends under...more
Joy H.
Apr 03, 2013 Joy H. marked it as keep-in-mind
Added 4/3/13. (first published 2002)

ELIZABETH STROUT INTERVIEW:
================================
What do you plan to read next?

"The Italian writer Elena Ferrante. I just read about her work and it seems like it might be scarily honest, so I want to check that out."
FROM: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/boo...
================================

See a review by a GR member here:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Lola425
Such an honest look at the kind of psychological gymnastics one can go through in the aftermath of the break up of a marriage. At first I found myself so angry at Olga because she was consumed with her rage and jealousy at the expense of her children's well-being. As the novel progressed, however, her temporary madness took hold of me and I realized she was in no position to choose her children over her suffering. This was another harrowing read, painful, and I'm not sure that I felt any relief...more
Valisa Iskandar
I wonder how I would have felt if I had read this 2 years ago.

But I recognize every layers and nuances she describe, so vividly.

The emotional rollercoaster, the anger, the bitterness.

She captured everythign so magnificently, so profoundly and yet with such clarity and detachment... can you be passionately distant?

She offers passionate recounts of grief, anger, curiosity and madness about losing someone and a life so suddenly without apologising.

This is a book every woman should read...
Bill
Aug 18, 2012 Bill rated it 4 of 5 stars
Shelves: 2012
I enjoyed this book despite my sincere hatred for the main character.When Olga's husband declares he's leaving her one day after lunch, she goes circus-freak crazy: body-slamming her ex on the sidewalk, defecating in the park, smashing her neighbor's window, and talking smut to locksmiths. Yes, she was traumatized. No, I wouldn't want to find myself in her place. Nevertheless, I began to despise her when she whipped her dog repeatedly with a stick simply because she was a woman scorned. I found...more
CoffeeBook Chick
http://www.coffeeandabookchick.com/20...

My initial interest in this book was solely based around the public shyness of the author. From Naples, Italy, Elena Ferrante's work is published by Europa Editions. Rumors abound on who the real identify of the elusive writer is. Some say she is covering for another writer. Some say it might be a male author. And some just think she doesn't want anything to do with public scrutiny.

It was intriguing and I wanted to pick the book up immediately. Thanks to m...more
Karlo Mikhail Mongaya
“One April afternoon, right after lunch, my husband announced that he wanted to leave me.” Thus began Elena Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment, a novel chronicling a wife’s desperate struggle to cope with her new situation. From the first page onwards, the wife tells us her story with the same lack of sentimentality and brutal honesty.

And the wife is left alone to fend for “[t]he children, the dog, the shopping, lunch and dinner, money. Everything pointed out to me the practical consequences of...more
Blanche
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Rujeko
though elena ferrante is very mysterious and all -- "Though one of Italy’s most important and acclaimed contemporary authors, she has successfully shunned public attention and kept her whereabouts and her true identity concealed." -- and she certainly knows the ins and outs of the crazed female psyche, it's a bit much. pages and pages of our narrator slowly losing her cookies (admittedly after being abruptly left with two kids by her philandering ass of a husband) is interesting, in a voyeuristi...more
Nancyc
Everyone knows divorce is a terrible ordeal. When a marriage, a family, is suddenly ripped apart by the husband leaving for a younger woman, the suffering is horrific. It's one of the oldest of stories. Countless woman have experienced it. Those who do, look on others embarking on the path with pity and knowing. Women who've experienced this kind of break up know that the only way through it is, well, through it.

But no one talks about it. Probably because it hurts so damned much. Eventually, the...more
Jay
I have been looking for this book for years. I read it at least 4 years ago and I could not for the life of me remember who the author was let alone the title. This novel reflects the raw emotion of an abandoned woman. It clearly depicts the depths of our strength. How it is that we get passed and through just about anything. Especially when we think that we will die from it, the emotional pain is just that great. But then we don't and we persevere, we become that much stronger!
Janet
I did a no-no...I judged a book by it's cover. And, of course, it misled me. I was in the mood to get lost in a story of a woman freeing herself from the chains of a limiting life...losing herself in passion and a bit of ecstasy thrown in for good measure. If I would have read the book jacket, I would have been enlightened that I was treading into a completely different variety of losing oneself. But, I didn't...(because sometimes I want no hints). While the writing was OUTSTANDING, I found myse...more
Jiemin
Beautiful, gripping inner journey of a deserted woman, stuck with her lost self and children, regaining her identity and faith through her everyday being. Moving, mesmerizing, and reassuring. Makes you wonder, did the author go through a divorce too? How else would she be able to describe what was going on through Olga's mind, and nailed it down to the teeth? Once you pick up the book, you will be taken on the journey, to feel, ache, evolve, and be enlightened.

Sean of the Dead
I work in a musuem and this was sent to our lost and found department. No one claimed it so I figured I'd take it home and I'm glad I did. This was a great read. Very sad, the protagonist really spirals into madness, I nver read anything quite like this. I read in a couple of days, couldn't put it down. Glad this Italian work made it's way to the states.
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