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
Rarely have the foundations upon which our ideas of motherhood and womanhood rest been so candidly questioned. This compelling novel tells the story of one woman's headlong descent into what she calls an "absence of sense" after being abandoned by her husband.
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
