The Days of Abandonment

by Elena Ferrante, Ann Goldstein (Translator)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

This tautly written novel about divorce and a woman's downward spiral is shockingly honest — and unputdownable.

A BEST BOOK OF THE CENTURY - NEW YORK TIMES

From the New York Times–bestselling author of My Brilliant Friend, this novel of a deserted wife’s descent into despair—and rage—is “a masterpiece” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

The Days of Abandonment is the gripping story of an Italian woman’s experiences after being suddenly left by her husband after fifteen years of marriage. With two young children to care for, Olga finds it more and more difficult to do the things she used to: keep a spotless house, cook meals with creativity and passion, refrain from using obscenities. After running into her husband with his much-younger new lover in public, she cannot even refrain from assaulting him physically.

In a “raging, torrential voice” (The New York Times), Olga conveys her journey from denial to devastating emptiness—and 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.

“Intelligent and darkly comic.”—Publishers Weekly

“Remarkable, lucid, austerely honest.”—The New Yorker

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781933372006
Publisher:	Europa Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	09/01/2005
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.32(w) x 8.34(h) x 0.59(d)

About the Author

Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), which was made into a film directed by Roberto Faenza, Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), adapted by Mario Martone, and The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008), soon to be a film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal. She is also the author of Incidental Inventions (Europa, 2019), illustrated by Andrea Ucini, Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey (Europa, 2016) and a children’s picture book illustrated by Mara Cerri, The Beach at Night (Europa, 2016). The four volumes known as the “Neapolitan quartet” (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child) were published by Europa Editions in English between 2012 and 2015. My Brilliant Friend, the HBO series directed by Saverio Costanzo, premiered in 2018.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for The Days of Abandonment

"A masterpiece...The magic of Days of Abandonment remains the fierce intelligence of its narrator."
—The Philadelphia Inquirer 

"The writer is immensely self-aware and her frankness is stunning."
—The New York Times 

"Ferrante's novels are tactile and sensual, visceral and dizzying."
—The Guardian

"Nothing you read about Elena Ferrante's work prepares you for the ferocity of it."
—Amy Rowland, The New York Times 

"Ferrante's voice feels necessary. She is the Italian Alice Munro."
—Mona Simpson, author of Casebook and Anywhere But Here 

"Elena Ferrante: the best angry woman writer ever!"
—John Waters, director

"[Ferrante] describes the female experience so intimately and so vividly that the reader feels like she could (and should) know the writer personally."
—Kat Stoeffel, New York Magazine  

"Ferrante puts most other writing at the moment in the shade. She's marvelous"
—Booker Prize-winning author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan

From the Publisher

The template for the hot-blooded Italian best seller The Days of Abandonment is familiar, in fiction and in life. But the raging, torrential voice of the author is something rare. Using the secret of her identity to elevate this book's already high drama, the author (Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym) describes the violent rupture of a marriage with all the inner tranquillity that you might associate with Medea. When her book's heroine has the temerity to invoke Anna Karenina approaching the railroad tracks, the analogy is actually well earned.
— The New York Times

Janet Maslin

Once an aspiring writer, Olga traded literary ambition for marriage and motherhood; when Mario dumps her after 15 years, she is utterly unprepared. Though she tells herself that she is a competent woman, nothing like the poverella (poor abandoned wife) that mothers whispered about in her childhood, Olga falls completely apart. Routine chores overwhelm her; she neglects her appearance and forgets her manners; she throws herself at the older musician downstairs; she sees the poverella's ghost. After months of self-pity, anger, doubt, fury, desperation and near madness, her acknowledgments of weaknesses in the marriage feel as earned as they are unsurprising. Smoothly translated by New Yorker editor Goldstein, this intelligent and darkly comic novel-which sat atop Italian bestseller lists for nearly a year, has been translated into 12 languages and adapted for an Italian film slated for 2006 release-conveys the resilience of a complex woman. Speculation about the identity of the pseudonymous Ferrante, whose previous novel is scheduled for 2006 release by Europa, has reached Pynchon-like proportions in Italy. (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

First published in Italy in 2002, this book tells the timeless story of a married man leaving his wife for a much younger woman. Narrator Olga describes how her husband Mario tells her matter-of-factly about his lover after lunch one afternoon. As a metaphor for her situation, Olga invokes the "legend" of the poverella (literally the "poor woman"), who loses her home, marriage, and financial and emotional stability when her husband leaves her. Olga makes an effort to stave off that fate-she does not scream or rebuke Mario for abandoning her and her young children for a while, instead maintaining an eerie calm. Her emotions eventually boil over, however, and humiliation and anger come off her like molten lava, searing everything that they touch. Olga candidly describes the anxiety, fear, and tumult that lead from her trying to hurt Mario and his young lover to her creating a peaceful home for her and her children. In the end, she finds her own way out. Raw and gut-wrenching, this book will find fans in literary fiction readers but not among the timid. For medium and larger public libraries with contemporary fiction collections.-Lisa Nussbaum, Dauphin Cty. Lib. Syst., Harrisburg, PA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

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