Book Review: The Days of Abandonment is an amazing, absorbing, emotional read, that may not be for everyone. Ferrante's writing is powerful, vivid, makes every word count. How many novels have you read where you can skim whole paragraphs -- not so here. The language is almost hyper-real, like a photo-realist painting. Superficially, this is simply the story of Olga, a woman scorned, betrayed, but Ferrante's ability to go profoundly into the character, to examine and create unique, individual depths and details keeps this from being the easy stereotypical story of a broken marriage. The author mines the character and situation for wisdom and insight, drilling deep into Olga's psyche, the ghosts of her childhood, her damage. At one point in The Days of Abandonment Olga realizes that her husband "had not taken away the world, he had taken away only himself." Ferrante measures the distances between people, between spouses, lovers, friends, parents and children. It's the evocation of these distances, the isolation of human beings, that makes this book work so well. I was sucked into the story, could feel it. Even those moments which were too much, I could still relate. Some points just seemed obvious, yet still valuable: "What a mistake ... to believe that I couldn't live without him, when for a long time I had not been at all certain that I was alive with him." Life has cliches. The Days of Abandonment is such an individual story, so unique to the one character, that it won't work for everyone. In life it's difficult to connect. That's how it is between people when you're an adult. This is an adult book, written by an adult, to be read by adults. [5★]
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