A Sense of Newness, Yet a Sense of Having Been There Before

There are some books that stay with us–like the aftertaste of a favorite Indian dish–long after the waiter has taken the last plate away.

Elena Ferrante’s masterpiece, The Days of Abandonment,  translated elegantly from the Italian by Ann Goldstein, continues to have just such a profound impact on my days, long after I finished savoring her magical words.

Indeed, there are some books that say things in such a way that it’s as if one is hearing for the very first time things one has heard many times before.  And when the things those books are saying are the very things that one has been trying to say as beautifully as the author has, one feels at  home, one feels an amazing sense of peace.  A sense of peace born of the thought, “I am not alone.”

 A Sense of Loss

The Days of Abandonment tells the story of Olga’s excruciating journey from betrayed wife to liberated sojourner, with microscopic scrutiny of one particularly painful, gut-wrenching day, and with an overflowing of empathy that makes understandable, if not rational, the absurd things an abandoned wife and mother might do.

Missing Pieces

If I were forced at pain of injury to conjure something I found missing in The Days of Abandonment, it would be only that I did not know enough of why Mario left Olga for Gina, other than the obvious:  youth and availability.  Of course, to venture deeper into Mario’s reasoning, in the hands of such an extraordinarily skilled author as Elena Ferrante, would be to unearth enough material for a book all its own.

Overall

Overall, this book beautifully tells the story of countless women in countless cultures.  It tells the story of my mother–or at least I believe it does.  (If she were here, and I thought she would be willing to answer, I might ask her if Olga’s story isn’t hers as well.)

And if Olga were here, I would thank her for having the courage to tell her story.  So powerful is this story, that it is hard to believe that Olga lives only between the book covers.  In reality, she lives everywhere there are women who’ve suffered the singular, yet universally-shared pain of betrayal.

Thank you, Elena Ferrante, for telling our stories with such courage and grace.