Reviews with content warning for Pedophilia - The Days of Abandonment

Reviews tagging 'Pedophilia'

The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

4 reviews

m4rtt4's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

We support women's rights but also women's wrongs.✨

The issue of Mario being a groomer should have been properly acknowledged but other than that, I don't really have any complaints. Maybe I would have related to Olga more if I was a mother or if I had experienced a break up. Olga's feelings are valid, too often we take mothers and motherhood for granted. (I do not condone all her actions but I understand where they come from)

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anna_catherine73's review

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

A truly raw story of a woman scorned, very well written. It annoyed me how much of the book glossed over the fact that Mario literally groomed a 15 year old, which is my main criticism.

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yanaaxmaria's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

…it was difficult to put up with me. I found myself alone and frightened by my own desperation

This was my first encounter with Elena Ferrante and her writing and it definitely won’t be my last. Although the book was good, I’m not quite sure where I stand rating-wise.

I found the story itself is so claustrophobic and intense in the best way possible. The plot of the book was portrayed so well and Ferrante has an amazing talent in portraying unhinged women.

This book follows our narrator’s descent into what she calls an “absence of senses” after being abandoned by her husband, who left her for a much younger woman. Olga is left to deal with her suffering while trying to remain the same mother and woman she has always been. She questions everything about her life and the people in it, even her children.

Our narrator looses herself alongside the loss of her husband and becomes forgetful, erratic, and harsh. Completely unable to function, when she and her children are stuck in their apartment during the clawing heat of summer, Olga is forced to reckon with her new reality as the abandoned woman and forge a new identity, away from being a wife. Olga’s shift in mental state is very clear and she is incapable of finding a way to live her life.

Ferrante wrote this book with purpose, you can feel the shift in Olga’s mental state as the language slowly changes and becomes more erratic and strange. I think that’s why I’m having a hard time deciding whether or not I loved the book. The middle section of the book was filled with long and confusing sentences that made it hard for me to understand what was going on. These strange sentences were (more than likely) intentional and written in order to confuse the reader but I just found myself skimming through a lot of it.

It's intense and hard to read at moments as we are forced into Olga's mental state with her. She is angry, mourning, depressed. Her actions are shocking and erratic, but it successfully explores the idea of what happens to the person left behind in a relationship by another and how we deal with this pain.

Olga was written as an unlikeable character and untrustworthy narrator (intentionally, I believe) throughout most of the book but I couldn’t stop myself from really liking her. No matter what Olga did, no matter how rude or hurtful she was, I could find myself disliking her. I was filled with deep sympathy and sadness for her, often feeling like I’m going through the heartbreak alongside her.

We get to see all the stages of Olga’s growth as she goes through such a heartbreaking time in her life. We see her fall and grow and fall again until she reaching a groundbreaking point.

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acdupont's review

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challenging tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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