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A Novel
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
"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
"A masterpiece...The magic of Days of Abandonment remains the fierce intelligence of its narrator." —The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Ferrante's voice feels necessary. She is the Italian Alice Munro." —Mona Simpson, author of Casebook and Anywhere But Here
"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
This information about The Days of Abandonment was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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 Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey (Europa, 2016) in which she recounts her experience as a novelist, 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 in America by Europa between 2012 and 2015. The first season of the HBO series My Brilliant Friend, directed by Saverio Costanzo,...
... Full Biography
Link to Elena Ferrante's Website
Name Pronunciation
Elena Ferrante: EH-leh-nuh feh-RAHN-tay. Rolled "R" in "Ferrante."
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