Book notes: The Days of Abandonment—Elena Ferrante

The book is the story of how Olga recovers when her husband of fifteen years abandons her.

The novel had small set of characters and is set in a single apartment. It is a furious flow of emotion, good book.

Some quotes:

On Turin:

On first impact, I didn’t like they city, it seemed to me metallic; but I soon discovered how pleasant it was to watch the seasons from the balcony.

On her own, family resonated with my family:

My own family was full of noisy emotions, always on display, and I—especially during adolescence, even when I was sitting mutely, hands covering my ears, in a corner of our house in Naples, oppressed by the traffic of Via Salvator Rosa —I felt that I was inside a clamorous life and that everything might come apart because of a too piercing sentence, an ungentle movement of the body.

On breaking down:

But I felt that things were taking a turn for the worse, and I was frightened. Having to stay alert in order to avoid mistakes and confront dangers had exhausted me to the point where sometimes simply the urgency of doing something made me think that I really had done it.

This paragraph reminded me of the great Argentinian movie Wild Tales:

From a small window in the wall to my left a man stuck his head out; he was not disposed to chat, and he got rid of me with a few words and disappeared again: there were no offices, let alone open to the public; everything was reduced to aseptic voice, computer screen, e-mail, bank operation; if a person—he said to me coldly—has anger to vent, sorry, there’s no one here to tangle with.

On recovering:

To those who hurt me, I react giving back in kind. I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned.