The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante****

Reading dates: 22 February-6 March 2020

I adore Ferrante’s precise prose. This book is fairly hard, though, for someone experiencing grief, as it portrays the breakdown (and subsequent beginnings of a recovery) of a woman abandoned by her husband. The dark day of Olga is brutally written, it does not hold back on any of the shit that comes up. Ferrante has a view on sex and children that I find rewarding to read because it is not mainstream, it is a lot more nuanced, less evolutionary.

I am not sure I would like to re-read this book though, parts of it were too hard, too harrowing, even of masterful, and made me want to take a break but the internal world it awakens. No doubt I will be back to Ferrante, as I will miss her writing and the amazing narrative chapter structure of her books.