The Lost Daughter in Around the World in 80 Books

May 26, 2010 Kaley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audiobooks, 2010, arc, next-chapter-book-club, 2022

I picked this book up at BEA10 at the Europa booth. If you've read The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I'm sure you noticed the beautiful, velvety, sumptuous cover. Well, all the Europa books have the same type of cover (with different artwork, of course) and I was immediately drawn in by their eye-appeal. Lost Daughter caught my eye, and although you aren't supposed to judge a book by its cover, well... obviously I did. And I am SO glad I did!

This is a very short book; I might call it a novella. The I picked this book up at BEA10 at the Europa booth. If you've read The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I'm sure you noticed the beautiful, velvety, sumptuous cover. Well, all the Europa books have the same type of cover (with different artwork, of course) and I was immediately drawn in by their eye-appeal. Lost Daughter caught my eye, and although you aren't supposed to judge a book by its cover, well... obviously I did. And I am SO glad I did!

This is a very short book; I might call it a novella. The main character is Leda, a divorced mother of two grown daughters. When the book opens, she is off to spend the summer at the sea with the hopes of getting away from life, so to speak, and studying and writing (she is a university professor). On her first day in the small Italian village where she rents an apartment, she encounters a large, boisterous, and we eventually learn, dangerous family who frequents the same stretch of beach that she visits every day. What follows is an odd, disturbing, and somewhat complicated summer that will change Leda forever.

It isn't very often that I read a book, and love it thoroughly, and yet still feel unresolved as to whether I even like the main character. Leda suffers from what I would call maternal ambivalence, and frequently behaves in ways that I found unsettling, perplexing, and even disturbing. Her actions are unpredictable, from the bizarre situation she gets herself into at the beach, to her complicated past as the mother of younger daughters. It's a brutally honest and intimate look into a troubled and unstable mind.

As soon as I finished, I went online, anxious to see how the reviews compared to my own feelings about the story. It's interesting that almost all the reviews I read were in fact quite similar to mine; loved it, hated it, was disturbed by it, couldn't put it down... all at the same time. I only wish I had read this as part of a book club, as I think it would be fabulous for discussion! I will be recommending it at work, to be certain. If you've read it, I'd love to hear your reaction! And if you're local, and you'd like to borrow my copy, I'd be willing to loan it. ...more

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Mar 02, 2018 Jillian rated it it was amazing

Elena Ferrante is in a class of her own. She writes nuance and complexity like no one else, and is, for me, the absolute literary authority on motherhood/daughterhood. I can’t do justice in describing Ferrante’s ability to capture culture, scene, mood and female experience. 5 stars hands down.

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Jan 04, 2022 Julie Griffin rated it really liked it

This shorter book asks, as do so many of Ferrante's books, what is motherhood? What can be beautiful and passionate for some women can be stifling and frustrating for others, and a lifelong entanglement that both mother's and daughters strive all their lives to understand, to replicate, to escape....
As we join our unnamed narrator on holiday on the Italian coast not too far from Naples, she admits that she feels freedom as a luxury after her two grown daughters have relocated to Canada to live This shorter book asks, as do so many of Ferrante's books, what is motherhood? What can be beautiful and passionate for some women can be stifling and frustrating for others, and a lifelong entanglement that both mother's and daughters strive all their lives to understand, to replicate, to escape....
As we join our unnamed narrator on holiday on the Italian coast not too far from Naples, she admits that she feels freedom as a luxury after her two grown daughters have relocated to Canada to live with their father. As the university professor continues her research and writing undisturbed, she begins to spend her days drawn into the loud sprawling family from Naples who are staying at a villa nearby. The rest of the family she finds rather coarse and uninteresting, but the currently daughter less mother is charmed at first by a three year old and her young mother, playing together in the sand and in the water, especially with a plastic doll. They pretend to feed it, to put it to sleep, to read and sing to the doll, to nurse it... The next day the child goes missing briefly and our narrator finds her. When she returns her to her chaotic family, the narrator makes a strange and symbolic choice, and we wait intensely to see what will happen as the narrator is hit by a pine cone to the back, has an unpleasant encounter with the teenage boys in a movie theater, and runs into various family members in the village in the next few days. All the while, the narrator is moved to review her own time as a mother of young children, their time together as mother and teenage daughters, and what place both her children and her sense of self has played in her life. She wants to advise the young mother and yet knows she has no real place to do so.
Ferrante writes in her usual mix of earthy and lyrical prose, and we are reminded that motherhood, like a cheap plastic doll, might look beautiful on the surface but have hidden ugliness at its core, but it is still a life experience that is one's own and that can't be replaced, even if there are regrets and choices we would not take again. Or would we?
I read this earlier book by Elena Ferrante before I watch the film on Netflix with Olivia Colman. I really like Colman but I cannot see her in this part. Ferrante's characters are earthy and loud and unrestrained and Italian. I'm also afraid that moving the setting to Greece will change the character of the story.
Recommend for fans of Ferrante's more famous Neopolitan books who might recognize some of the personalities here. It's a quick beach read but a thoughtful and well structured one. ...more

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Dec 02, 2021 Kay Green rated it liked it

Shelves: bookclub

This short novella was written 6 years before My Brilliant Friend. Since I read all 4 of the novels in the Neapolitan series where we follow Elena and Lila for over 60 years of their lives, i can't really compare that to a novella which is 150 pages of a woman's life. I love Ferrante's writing and could see how she would evolve into the writer who created the life history of these women. In The lost Daughter she uses her very honest descriptions of what women are feeling - sometimes so that the ...more

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Aug 09, 2022 Natasha rated it really liked it

A brilliant short novel by the master storyteller Elena Ferrante. A raw blunt view of motherhood that few dare to delve into. The story has themes similar to her Neapolitan novels that fans of Ferrante will easily recognize.

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