The Days of Abandonment

The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante is the incandescent, terrifying novel that first made international readers understand the full force of her literary gifts. When Olga’s husband leaves her for a younger woman, her carefully constructed life dissolves — and Ferrante renders this dissolution with a ferocity and psychological precision that leaves the reader shaken. The novel is compact and relentless, moving from confusion to rage to something more complex and difficult to name, forcing the reader to recognise in Olga’s extremity something true about the experience of abandonment that polite fiction usually refuses to approach. Published by Europa Editions, The Days of Abandonment is one of the defining feminist novels of the twenty-first century — a book that should be read before the Neapolitan novels and is equally essential in its own right.