Karanlık Kız

by Elena Ferrante, Eren Yücesan Cendey (Translator)

İngiliz edebiyatı öğretmeni Leda, yıllar yılı kendini işine ve iki kızına vermiş orta yaşlarda dul bir kadındır. Kızları büyüyüp babalarının yanına, Kanada’ya gitmesiyle yalnızlaşacağını düşünür. Ancak beklenmedik bir şekilde özgürleşme, hafifleme hissedince, bundan güç alarak uzun bir yaz tatili planlar. İtalya’nın güneyinde bir kıyı kasabasına gidecek, orada hem dinlenecek hem de çalışmalarını tamamlayacaktır.

Gelgelelim saatlerce güneşlenmek, yüzmek, okumakla huzurlu bir şekilde geçen günler anbean yükselen bir tedirginlik hissiyle gölgelenir.

Kumsaldaki bir aile, basit bir rastlantıyla hayatına girip günlük rutinini bozunca, Leda’nın dengesi büsbütün altüst olur. Ne de olsa zihninden kovduğu gerçekler vardır; şimdi düzenli ve durağan hayat sürse de, yakın geçmişte, bir anne ve bir eş olarak geleneklere karşı gelmiş, kendiyle birlikte en yakınlarının hayatında da derin izler bırakacak şeyler yapmıştır.

Elena Ferrante’nin başyapıtı dört ciltlik “Napoli Romanları”nın adeta çıkış noktası olan bu kısa roman, yazarın ele aldığı belli başlı temaları tam anlamıyla kristalleştiriyor. Karanlık Kız aile kurumunun kısıtlı dünyasını, –bir kadın olarak– özgürlük için ödenen bedelleri ve tutkuları, hüsranları, travmaları anlatıyor...


“Karanlık Kız müthiş bir başarı... İncelikli ama cüretkâr, ayrıntılı ve uçucu: kesik yarası gibi can yakıyor ama bir yandan da merhem oluyor.”
Le Repubblica

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Audiobook, Italy, Literary Fiction, Italian Literature, Book Club

146 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist. Ferrante's books, originally published in Italian, have been translated into many languages. Her four-book series of Neapolitan Novels are her most widely known works.

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is going to sound strange -- I loved this book, but I didn't enjoy it. The story involves a mother of grown daughters who is dealing with her own ambivalence at what she gave up to assume that role. The author manages to take the flicker of lost independence that every mother feels and magnify it and state it in a brutal and unflinching way. I hated the narrator, but I couldn't look away.

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

in my ferrante era:

i'm spending my time reflecting on what it means to be a woman and mentally disintegrating because of it.

this is a book i really liked and a book i hated reading. it's precise in its observations and cruel and calculated in making you feel the embarrassment and anxiety and self-questioning of its characters.

it's ferrante!

bottom line: a tough read, intentionally.

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘A child, yes, is a vortex of anxieties.’

A vacation at a blissful Italian beach under the sun seems an unlikely setting for a dark, psychological tale of familial abuse and wrestling with your inner demons, but Elena Ferrante excels in The Lost Daughter at pulling back the curtains on comforting ideas to expose a darkness lurking underneath. This is a gripping look at the dark side of motherhood, with a portent plot that builds such a tension you feel might tear you to pieces, not unlike the inner tensions that undid the narrator, middle aged Leda, when she was a young mother. Ferrante looks at the ways homelife and a career can tug someone in opposite directions and strain them emotionally, but more importantly she examines how giving oneself to the care of others might make you feel you are disappearing and suddenly want yourself all back. The Lost Daughter elusively twists through the timeline as it juxtaposes mothers and daughters and Ferrante delivers a dark, gritty, and very psychological exposition about struggling to live up to maternal norms and the abuse we can bestow upon one another.

‘When had Nina chosen me, on the beach. How had I entered her life. By pushes and shoves, certainly; chaotically.’

The novella (it tops out at 140 pages) begins as Leda, her daughters grown and out of the house to live near their father, finds herself living her best life. Feeling rejuvenated and free, she takes a month-long vacation to spend time at the beach before she will return to her university position at the start of term (I was quite charmed to read she was planning to teach the Strachey’s Olivia). There she observes Nina, a young mother playing with her daughter Elena, and Elena’s doll, which sparks memories of her own children. After Elena briefly goes missing, Leda begins to spiral into assessing her transgressions and actions as a mother and in a moment bursting with psychological implications, steals Elena’s doll.

What works best about this book is how Ferrante manages to unpack a multitude of themes and ideas so succinctly, carefully balancing a minimum amount of examination to its maximum effect. Nothing feels excess and singular moments imply more than an isolated incident. As when Leda’s daughters criticize her behavior saying that ‘the unspoken says more than the spoken,’ Ferrante allows vagueness to enhance the tension and feelings of uneasiness. Nina’s husband and his family, for example, are described as hard and cold people with the only mention of their livelihoods coming from the beach attendant who says they are simply ‘bad people.’ While it is hinted there is a mafia angle, not knowing for sure has a stronger effect of unease than knowing, which would ultimately be unnecessary in this tightly-wound story. Ferrante has a very unique cadence to her writing (wonderfully translated here by Ann Goldstein) that enhances the sense of unease.

‘I looked at her in terror, how far could I go, I frightened myself.’

How often we re-examine our lives and see our actions differently when they aren’t drenched in the emotion of the moment. ‘The hardest things to talk about are the ones we ourselves can't understand,’ Ferrante writes in the opening pages, and even when questioned about motherhood, Leda finds she has ‘composed my answers to [Nina’s] anxious questions as exercises in reticence.’ There is a sharp critique of the expectations of mothers in society, particularly with implications of self-sacrifice. ‘I suspected she was playing her role of beautiful young mother not for love of her daughter,’ Leda thinks watching Nina with her daughter, ‘but for us, the crowd on the beach.’ It is a performance, playing the role of a mother, much like the role Leda found she either couldn’t, or was unwilling, to commit to and the shame imposed upon her because of it. ‘[O]ne wants a child with the animal opacity reinforced by popular beliefs,’ Leda thinks, and it is a role women are shoved into or assumed they must shoulder even if they do not think themselves right for the role or would rather retain themselves than give themself away to others as Leda felt.

‘Everything in those years seemed to me without remedy, I was without remedy.’

Not that this forgives Leda for her actions, as we learn she treated her children with disdain and violence, often lashing out or striking them in ways that were ‘not a possibly educational act but real violence, contained but real,’ but Ferrante shows that it is still something important to examine. ‘What had I done that was so terrible, in the end,’ Leda thinks, and Ferrante keeps the reader cloistered in her head so we only view her memories through her rationalizations of them. ‘I was overwhelmed by myself. I, I, I: I am this, I can do this, I must do this,’ she thinks, fully admitting she was thinking of restoring herself to herself when she abandoned her children for 3 years and each confrontation with her past is met with her reasoning for it.

‘I had been a girl who felt lost, this was true. All the hopes of youth seemed to have been destroyed, I seemed to be falling backwards towards my mother, my grandmother, the chain of mute or angry women I came from. Missed opportunities.’

This is mirrored in Nina, who confesses feeling similarly, which evokes sympathy and a desire to help in Leda.

‘I know nothing and I'm worth nothing. I got pregnant, I gave birth to a daughter, and I don't even know how I'm made inside. The only true thing I want is to escape.’

Escape seems to be a major theme in this book, such as Leda wanting to escape the legacy of abusive mothers that she sees in looking back through family history (her daughters, too, wanting to be different than their mother for the same reason), wanting to escape the town of her childhood, Nina wanting to escape a sinister husband, and wanting to escape becoming merely a function of motherhood in place of a Self. Leda wants from her daughters ‘to be seen by them as a person and not as a function,’ only feeling herself again when they are away from her. When she cares for the stolen doll, she is able to perform a motherly function such as dressing it and cleaning it without having to actually give anything of herself.

Ferrante’s character analysis is quite brilliant here, relying on their juxtapositions to define multiple characters with the same brushstroke. Nina and Leda serve as excellent foil characters, though Leda also identifies with both Elena and the doll as well. ‘You keep your liquid darkness in your stomach,’ she thinks when pouring the dirty beach water from the doll, identifying with it as ‘I, too, was hiding many dark things, in silence.’ She observes that Elena has regressed due to the sadness over losing her doll, but finds she too is regressing both emotionally and physically when she measures and weighs herself: ‘Among my most dreaded fantasies was the idea that I could get smaller, go back to being adolescent, child, condemned to relive those phases of my life.’ And despite her hatred of her mother, she finds herself falling into the same patterns of abuse, except worrying she is worse since her mother ‘never left us, despite crying that she would; I, on the other hand, left my daughters almost without announcing it.’ Her own daughters, it seems, are likely to get trapped in a similar fate as Leda fixates on how much her daughter’s seem to wish to identify themselves apart from their mother and her actions.

The Lost Daughter is a dark, gritty and rather uncomfortable novel that is undeniably gripping and intelligent. It packs a lot for such a short book. Ferrante ends it with quite the shock, and the commentary on abuse seems to be one not of redemption but simply acknowledging it is a problem before it is too late. This was my first Ferrante and I am disappointed in myself for not reading her sooner because I was instantly hooked and plan on devouring book after book by her now. This hits hard and while it may leave you feeling ugly inside, you’ll still want to thank Ferrante for it.

4/5

‘The moment arrives when your children say to you with unhappy rage, why did you give me life.’

[leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

this little book is really all the proof needed to put those ‘elena ferrante is really a man’ conspiracy theories to rest. simply no man could understand the restrictions of femininity or communicate the experience of motherhood/daughterhood like this!

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

MADRE DI BAMBOLA


Olivia Colman è Leda, la protagonista del film scritto (premio al Festival di Venezia 2021) e diretto da Maggie Gyllenhaal

Qualche giorno fa ho letto queste parole che mi hanno fatto pensare a Elena Ferrante.
In particolare a questo romanzo, che è il suo libro che preferisco.

Il lavoro di uno scrittore è quello di dire le cose che si suppone non si debbano dire, di aiutarci a tornare allo stato iniziale, alle emozioni più primitive e assolute che abbiamo vissuto da bambino. Uno scrittore deve scavare in quei sentimenti che vorremmo non avere. Abbiamo sentimenti diversi e uno scrittore deve restituirceli e restituirci a essi, in modo veritiero.


Jessie Buckley è Leda da giovane.

In quale altro modo un lettore troverà ciò di cui ha bisogno, quando prende in mano un libro? E di cosa si ha bisogno quando si prende in mano un libro?
Si ha bisogno di qualcosa di sincero, di qualcosa che rammenti, che insegni di nuovo, così da tornare a sapere che cosa si prova davvero.
E oltre a ciò, si ha bisogno di aiuto per comprendere che cosa si prova a essere un’altra persona. Per noi sarebbe facile restare belli comodi all’interno del nostro punto di vista individuale. Ci è familiare. È il nostro. È noi. Ma questo significa non doversi assumere la responsabilità degli altri, perché gli altri non sono del tutti reali per noi. Senza questo, la nostra empatia si appiattirebbe, o non esisterebbe. Non è necessario guardare lontano per rendersi conto di ciò che accade in questo mondo, quando la nostra capacità di essere empatici scompare.


Dakota Johnson è Nina, la madre della bimba che perde la bambola. O alla quale Leda ruba la bambola?.

Io voglio aiutare le persone a capire un po' meglio le loro madri e i loro padri o i loro vicini di casa o le persone dalla pelle di colore diverso o di religione diversa. Voglio dare al lettore — fosse pure per un istante — una prospettiva più ampia del mondo, così che possa sentirsi più grande e non più piccolo, come così tante persone tendono a fare.


Foto di scena, Maggie Gyllenhaal dirige una scena del film.

E a questo punto vorrei aggiungere che — per me — una delle gioie della scrittura è che quando scrivo non giudico i miei personaggi. Altri li giudicheranno, forse, e sta bene. Ma i miei personaggi sono completamente liberi dal mio giudizio. Lascio che si comportino male quanto vogliono, e che siano ciò che sono. Lascio che si amino, in modo imperfetto, come noi tutti amiamo in modo imperfetto. A me interessa soltanto raccontare tutti i livelli diversi ai quali vivono le persone, perché noi viviamo tutti a livelli diversi. Non mi interessa il bene o il male, materia del melodramma. Ciò che mi sta a cuore sono le innumerevoli grinze che abbiamo dentro, le pieghe della nostra anima. A me interessa far sì che capiamo chi siamo.
Così facendo, la mia speranza è che, per tutto il tempo in cui il lettore si trova nel mondo dei miei libri, magari non si senta così solo.



Quando mia figlia era bambina, amava tantissimo i suoi pupazzi di peluche. Un giorno mi ha accompagnato in camera sua tenendomi per mano con la sua manina umida. Aveva allineato tutti i suoi peluche in fila. Mi ha guardato con orgoglio e mi ha detto: «Questi sono i miei amici ».
Ho ripensato spesso a quelle sue parole. Esprimono ciò che io sento nei confronti di tutti i personaggi inventati che mi hanno osservata nelle varie fasi della mia vita. Sono personaggi che ci perdonano mentre noi perdoniamo loro.
Questi sono i nostri amici. Noi abbiamo bisogno di loro, perché la vita, in qualche caso, comporta grande solitudine.


Ancora Maggie Gyllenhaal regista al lavoro.

Sono parole di un’altra scrittrice.
Una scrittrice che ammira e apprezza molto le opere di Elena Ferrante.
Sono parole di Elizabeth Strout.

Maggie Gyllenhaal ha preso questo libro e realizzato un magnifico film, il suo esordio alla regia e alla scrittura per il grande schermo. Anche se probabilmente, visti i tempi, di grandi schermi questo bel film ne vedrà pochi, solo quelli dei festival, e perlopiù si vedrà a casa su schermo di formato minore. Maggie ha messo insieme un cast magnifico e fatto brillare tre performance sopra tutte le altre: quella di Olivia Colman/Leda, quella di Jessie Buckley/Leda da giovane e quella di Dakota Johnson/Nina, madre della ragazzina che smarrisce la bambola. Accanto a queste tre magnifiche attrici ci sono Ed Harris, Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Mescal, perfino Alba Rohrwacher, ecc. La storia è trasferita dal sud Italia su un’isola greca, e la delizia dello spettatore + assicurata da una regia e una scrittura in stato di grazia.


Maggie Gyllenhaal in una sua più che notevole interpretazione nel bel film “The Kindergarten Teacher – Lontano da qui” remake dell'omonimo film israeliano.

[Antonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

After four read books, I can conclude that I experience an unconditional devotion to Ferrante's novels and emphatically place her amongst my favorite authors. I simply admire the frankness and the brutality of her thoughts and celebrate eagerly the woman's manifest in each sentence. Ferrante's struggle is to shatter the assumed, especially in conservative societies, image of the woman - the mother, the wife, the housekeeper. This is the similarity I find in each novel - the endeavor to redeem past presumption for the sake of the womanhood. Elena Ferrante possesses one of the most elegant and precise literary styles I have encountered in contemporary literature.

[Nayra.Hassan]

انه الرابط الحتمى الذي يندم عليه الجميع
معظم نساء العالم قادرات على الحمل و الولادة
و ربع نساء العالم فقط هن القادرات على الامومة
كل انثى عبر التاريخ ولدت و هي راغبة مهيأة للحمل الأول..و تتجلى رغبتها غريزيا في اللعب الطقسي بالدمى

و لكن الصدمة ان اطفالنا ليسوا بدمى صامتة. .يجلبون معهم فرحة عارمة مصحوبة بآلام صادمة تستمر حتى الموت

لا انصح بهذه الرواية للرجال مطلقا
لا انصح بها لفتيات ما قبل الزواج بالمرة
لا انصح بها لزوجات يكافحن لاجل الانجاب
لا انصح بها لمن لم يقرأ رباعية نابولي

انها رواية نفسية مستفزة عن الجرائم التي ترتكب باسم الامومة خلف الابواب المغلقة و تمر دوما ..تم كتابتها لفئة قليلة و لن يفهمها حقا سوى فئة اقل و هن: الامهات فوق 45 من العمر ممن فارقهن الابناء..و بالتالي هي نزوة لفيرانتي ليس اكثر

ليدا اكاديمية ايطالية في أواخر الاربعينات تذهب لمصيف مطول وحدها ؛و على الشاطيء تندمج يوميا في مراقبة اسرة نابولتينية..خاصة ام جميلة في الثانيةو العشرين و ابنتها في الثالثة و دميتهما المحببة

و أثناء المراقبة تتذكر ليدا ايام مخزية من حياتها مع بناتها كأم و ايضا فقرات من حياتها كابنة ..مع تعليقات بكل ما هو مسكوت عنه من توقعات المجتمع من الأم و الفارق بين ما هو واقع و ما هو مفترض في علاقات البنوة و الامومة
كل هذا باسلوبها الفيرانتي الشيطاني الاسر الذي يمسك بتلابيبك رغما عنك

ا" ثقل المسؤلية الساحق ..الرابط الخانق ..كنت اشعر ان قيودى نزعت باعجوبة ..كما لو ان مهمة عظيمة بلغت خواتيمها و لم تعد تثقل كاهلى"ا

احببت بشكل خاص رمزية ضياع الابنة
و قد اعادت ليدا الابنة لامها و عاقبتهما معا باختطاف الدمية ..لانها في واقع الامر ترى انه من الخطأ ان تكون نينا أما في هذا العمر المبكر و انها اقرب للطفولة ..فحسدت علاقتهما "كعادتها" و تمنت ان تفسدها و تضعهما تحت اختبار كريه لإثبات ان الامومة مجرد رابط غريزى .لزج كريه مثل الزواحف و الطحالب؟؟!!!! ا


و بالطبع هذه الرواية استطراد لتوضيح المزيد عن امومة "ايلينا" بطلة صديقتي المذهلة ..و تحليل الهواجس التي تتمكن من الامهات لدى احباطهن الحتمى من مسؤليات الامومة و الذي تسكت عنه معظم نساء للارض
ثم يرغبن في تصحيح اخطاءهن مع ابناءهن من خلال امومة مستعارة لمن تضعه الاقدار في طريقهن ممن هم في سن الابناء

وصف الضياع على الشاطيء كان موفقا لحد بعيد و قد جربته مع اقاربي مرارا و الحمد لله لم يحدث معي كأم ..فانا من الربع المحظوظ الذي خلق ليكون اما بشهادة من حولى "ام لابناءي و لكل من يصغرني سنا" ..لكني لم اصدم كثيرا من كلمات فيرانتي ..فهي تعبر عن كثيرات حقا..ممن اجدهن يذهبن للعمل بلا داعي مادى :تاركات رضع لم يكملوا شهرين ليتهربن من البقاء معهم

و اخيرا
لماذا لآ نعتبر ان نينا هى الابنة الضائعة لليلا ؟
و ان هذه الاسرة المنتمية للمافيا هي التي استحوذت عليها منذ فقدانها في الرابعةمن العمر ؛و كان هذا مصيرها الذي طالما تسألنا عنه؟
الن نرتاح جميعا هكذا تجاه هذه الرواية التي اغضبت الاغلبية و التي يستحيل على تقييمها؟

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s been awhile since I read - and ‘obsessively’ enjoyed Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan series. ( especially loved book 2 and 3).....
I went into this book completely blind!!
It’s a ‘thin-slim’......’thick-thought’-provoking novella.

I was immediately pulled in from the ‘get-go’ with these words:
“When my daughters moved to Toronto, where their father had lived and worked for years, I was embarrassed and amazed to discover that I wasn’t upset; rather, I felt light, as if only then had I definitely brought them into the world. For the first time in almost twenty-five years I was not aware of the anxiety of having to take care of them. The house was neat, as if no one lived there, I no longer had the constant bother of shopping and doing laundry, the woman who for years had helped with the household chores found a better paying job, and I felt no need to replace her”.

We meet divorced 47 year old Leda. She’s an English Professor.
Summer vacation is just beginning.
Leda feels lighter being completely alone without her two young adult daughters living with her. She calls her daughters on the phone once a day - but is surprisingly ecstatic to be alone.
Leda quickly
becomes physically lighter, eating only one meal a day.
She rents a summer beach house for a six week summer vacation near Naples.... bringing her school books to prepare assignments for when the fall term begins.
Ok.. sounds good - a nice summer-break- beach vacation....⛱...
not so fast...,,
Things become odd - puzzling- mysterious- haunting- and down right creepy!

Leda meets a young family also vacationing at the same beach.
She is fixated with another young mother (Nina), her child ( Elena) and Elena’s doll.
From Leda’s observations - judgements - projections and evaluations of the mother/daughter relationship between Nina & Elena....
Leda’s behavior becomes disturbing. Her choices mysteriously disturbing!
Leda’s inner reflective voice...dialogue with herself is intriguing....and unsettling.

Leda’s memories surface from her own younger days: as a daughter, wife, mother, and lover.
Regrets are heightened.... and an almost Stream of consciousness unfolds.

What emerges is quite dark ...
seriously haunting!

The self-assessment Leda has with herself is conflicting- sad - and psychologically complex.

A very unsettling novel... hard to feel sympathetic for Leda.....yet Elena Ferrante’s writing is gripping.

Rather than leaving this novel with the satisfaction of an insightful resolution-
I’m left with the bare-bone-reality of how devastating and brutally life-altering loss is.

[Dem · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante was out bookclub end of season read.

In this Novella The narrator, a forty-seven-year-old divorcée summering alone on the Ionian coast, becomes obsessed with a beautiful young mother who seems ill at ease with her husband’s rowdy, slightly menacing Neapolitan clan. When this woman’s daughter loses her doll, the older woman commits a small crime that she can’t explain even to herself.

I have to admit I totally struggled with the characters and the plot of this novel. I could not identify with Leda or any of her ideas on motherhood. I found the novel bizarre and while the writing in places was strong the plot and the characters were just too bizarre for my liking.

It didn't generate the discussion as a group we had hoped for.


The book has received great reviews online and once again I am in the minority in my dislike of this one.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this short novel from the ever incredible Elena Ferrante. The twisted story of the protagonist who steals a doll on a beach is both captivating and heartbreaking. In typical Ferrante fashion, the narration wanders between the primary narrative of the protagonist's seaside vacation and her memories of her now-moved away daughters. It is a poignant portrait of motherhood and dealing with getting old. A must-read for fans of the Naples tetralogy - for me perhaps her strongest standalone novella.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I know next to nothing about being a parent, unless you count taking care of a cat. And honestly I'm not even very good at that.

I've always been the gay Uncle (or "Guncle" as a recent popular novel coins it) who gets to do all the "cool" stuff like playing fun games, taking them to movies, going on trips, etc., without the actual hard work or thankless responsibility of enforcing discipline and restrictions and structure. It's always been the perfect arrangement, as far as I'm concerned.

All that's to say I don't think I'm really the ideal or intended reader for this moody psychological thriller about the anguish and ambivalence of being a mother. Yet it's a testament to the exceptional quality of Elena Ferrante's writing that I still found this to be a complex and captivating read.

It helps that I've always had a weakness for unreliable first-person narrators, and here we have one of the best I've read in awhile. Leda is a middle-aged Italian professor whose two daughters, now semi-independent young adults, have recently left her to go live with their father in Canada. To celebrate her newfound freedom, she treats herself to a leisurely summer vacation, where she notices a young mother and her three-year-old daughter playing together on the beach. This triggers a stream-of-consciousness-style series of memories, projections, and deeply conflicted reflections about motherhood.

At a slight 140 pages, this reads more like a gripping short story than a traditional novel. I hope it's not too much of a spoiler to reveal that there's not much of an actual plot. If you go into this expecting a suspenseful mystery or action-packed melodrama, you'll be sorely disappointed. But if you're like me and appreciate a more poetic, meditative read every now and then, I think you'll enjoy this dark, deep dive into one woman's turbulent and tormented state of mind as she reflects on her roles as a woman, wife, daughter, professor, and most importantly, as a mother.

Ferrante explores these themes with a remarkable clarity, candor, and compassion. I can only imagine that anyone reading this as a mother will find it almost unbearably relatable and unsettling, perhaps a little reassuring and comforting, possibly all of the above?

Looking very much forward to checking out the recent Oscar-nominated film adaptation written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and starring Olivia Coleman.

[Bianca thinksGRsucksnow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those who read Ferrante's marvellous Neapolitan novels will recognise the style and some of the themes: the rejection of one's roots and birthplace, being an intelligent and ambitious woman who has to deal with the society's constraints and the self-imposed ones; the ambivalence of motherhood with its highs and lows, the drudgery and the occasional exultations; the hot and cold of marital relations, the resentments and so on.

This is brutal and exquisitely complex, while also very simple.

Ferrante slays me like no other writer I've come across.

I shall watch the Netflix adaptation, hopefully, it won't disappoint.

NB: The adaptation is pretty close to the novel. I would have preferred to have Italian actors etc. but Maggie Gyllenhaal did a good job. Colman was excellent.

[Dalia Nourelden · Rating 4 out of 5]

حين بدأت الرواية كانت التعليقات عن سوء الرواية واستفزازها للامومة و للأمهات فابلتالى قرأتها وهناك احكام مسبقة عن الرواية وشعور بالتضامن مع الأمهات المستفزة لكن هل استفزاز الرواية سبب لان نقلل من تقيمها ؟ رأي الشخصى لأ .

بداية الرواية كما قال غلافها تعيد النظر في قدسية الامومة على ضوء احاسيس قائمة تعترى المرأة غالبا ماتسعى للتستر عليها لذا فأنا اجد أن كون الرواية استفزتكم لهذة الدرجة معناه نجاح الكاتبة فى إيصال أفكار ومشاعر شخصيتها بطريقة قوية لدرجة انها استفزت مشاعر الأمومة بداخلكم فذلك سبب لاعطاء الرواية النجوم كاملة وليس سحب كل النجوم منها😉😁 فما استفزكم هى الشخصية الام فى الرواية وليس اسلوب الكاتبة .وربما ما استفز البعض يعبر عما بداخل البعض الاخر ولا يستطيع التعبير عنه.

هناك موقف حدث جعلنى اتخلى عن حكمى المسبق وابدأ فى النظر للرواية من منطق ومنظور مختلف وأنظر للشخصية من زاوية مختلفة من رؤية البطلة . كان هذا الموقف في حديثها مع ابنتها على الهاتف فها هى ابنتها تتحدث وتسترسل ف الحديث دون ان تسأل عن أحوال امها وكما قالت او ربما سألت لكنها لم تنتظر لسماع احوال امها ، هذا الحدث بالذات استوقفنى ، لست أم لكنى اعلم جيدا شعور ان تحتاج للحديث ولا تجد من يسمعك وان يستمر من امامك ف الحديث دون ان يتوقف لحظة ليستمع لاحوالك و كانك لست مهما ليستمع اليك ، كأنك موجود فقط للاستماع لشكوى الآخرين.

واستوقفتنى كثيرا جملتها
《 أنا ميتة ولكني بخير 》


فلنتحدث عن بعض مافعلته

هل من الطبيعى أن تترك أم بناتها ثلاث سنوات دون ان تحادثهم او تراهم ؟
بالطبع لأ .
وأكرهها لهذا الموقف و إن كنت من مكان زوجها كنت أخذت اولادى ولا أعيدهم لها 😡😡 لكنه هو ايضا بعد فترة تركهم لوالدتها .
وكان هذا خطأها الثانى حين تركت بناتها لامها لترعاهم وهى التى تركت عائلتها حين اول فرصة سنحت لها فكيف تتركهم بعد ذلك ؟

قسوتها تجاه ابنتها وضربها لها فى احد المواقف ، انا ضد هذا العنف بالتأكيد لكن هناك جزء داخلى شعر بها وانها فقدت اعصابها وندمت بالتاكيد عما فعلته ، انا لست أم لكن هذا الموقف بشكل ما اشعر به ربما لانى عصبية جدا واجد انى ربما سأفقد اعصابى بهذا الشكل اذا كنت أم ( اللى بيته من زجاج ) لذا سأصمت عن هذا الموقف لانى اعلم انى ربما سأتصرف بنفس الشكل 🤐🤐

إحساسها تجاه بناتها ، هى تحبهم بالتاكيد لكن أفكارها الداخلية ربما تكون صادمة لا اعلم لكن ألم تفكر أى أم كما فكرت هى ؟؟
الم تشعر ولو لبعض الوقت ولو للحظة ان ابنائها قد سرقوا حياتها او استنزفوها ؟ وانها متعبة وترغب فى الراحة من مسؤليتهم ومن خوفها عليهم !

ليس جميع الامهات تفكر مثلها لكن هناك البعض مثلها ، وهذا لا يعنى انهم سيئين لكنهم فقط مرهقين ومتعبين ولهم كل الحق في ذلك ، فالأمهات فى النهاية بشر . سمعت عن امهات يتركن أبنائهن من فترة لاخرى ، امهات حين يتواجدوا كأنهم ليسوا موجودين ، حاضرين باجسادهم غائبين بامومتهم .

حسنا لن تأخذ جائزة الام المثالية وليست مثل يحتذى به لكن ربما تكون سبب لتتلافى الامهات أخطائها و ربما لتخبر من يشعر مثلها ان هذا الشعور ممكن وليس معناه أن صاحبته وحش يستحق القتل ، لكن تلافي اخطاء الرواية وحاولى اكثر أليس هذا احد أهداف الأدب والفنون ، محاولة اظهار الاخطاء والتجارب ليستطيع الآخرون الاستفادة منها .

الكاتبة اظهرت كل مايستفز و غير متعارف وغريب وماهو مسكوت عنه ، وما يدور ليس فقط خلف الابواب المغلقة لكن اشد الافكار عمقا و التى ربما يشعر بها البعض لكن يكره او يخشي الاعتراف بها .

ما استفزنى اكثر كان مافعلته مع دمية الطفلة ؟ بأى حق تأخذيها وتتركى الطفلة تبكى وتمرض بسبب غياب دميتها اجد هذا الموقف قسوة شديدة منها اكثر من اى قسوة على بناتها وهى ترى بكاء الطفلة وبحث الجميع عن الدمية مهما كان افكارها او شعورها .


نعم كرهت الشخصية وتعاطفت معها فى ذات الوقت وتعاطفت مع كره القراء لها 《 حسنا هناك ضعف داخلى شخصيا تجاه الشخصيات المنبوذة 》

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[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is signature Elena Ferrante, there is no mistaking her writing. She captures the torment of motherhood beautifully. The internal conflict of remaining an individual woman versus the constraints of motherhood. The regrets and remorse that constantly weigh a woman down, that juxtaposition really defines her books. This novel is weird in a good way. The conflicted nature of the main character suffering what I believe to be classic empty nest syndrome tinged with terrible regrets, she encounters a family she becomes slightly obsessed with while holidaying alone, this obsession makes her act in some strange and objectionable ways. It’s weird and wonderful in true Ferrante style. A truly intriguing read.

[chantalsbookstuff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a big favorite but an alright story. It was extremely boring at some points and felt like a dragged out memoir type story.

[Kristina Dauksiene · Rating 4 out of 5]

LT/ENG
...Tarsi atidarė mane pačią, esamus ir buvusius veiksmus ir atoveiksmius, reakcijas, jausmus, žodžius ar nutylėjimus. Išoperavo ir paliko neužsiūtą.
Tokia jau toji pirmoji pažintis su Ferrante.
🖋️Kaip paika galvoti, kad gali vaikams išsipasakoti, šiems nesulaukus bent penkiasdešimties. Tikėtis, kad jie pažvelgs į tave kaip į žmogų, o ne kaip į funkciją.Sakyti: aš esu jūsų istorija, atsispirkite nuo manęs, išklausykite, tai gali jums praversti.
*********************************************
As if it opened me up, current and past actions and reactions, feelings, said words or unspoken things. As if had a surgery and wound left open.
Thats what is my first acquaintance with Ferrante.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elena Ferrante's 3rd novel and the novel she has cited as her most daring. It's slim 130 pages prepared the ground for the epic and magnificent 1700 page My Beautiful Friend.

The set-up is simple: a divorced middle-aged woman with two grown up children is on holiday and becomes intrigued by a young girl and her mid-20s mother she sees on the beach. She initially sees their relationship as an ideal she failed to achieve, before, as she gets to know them better, realising that their issues mirror her own troubled past. For reasons she herself doesn't understand she steals the young girl's precious doll, which the girl treats as her own child.

But the prose and the exploration of the themes, particularly what would drive a mother to abandon her own children, have significant depth.

And as her friendship develops with the young mother she sees her family, with echoes of her own Camorran kin, the very cast that will form the background to Lenu and Lila's friendship in the Neopolitan quarter:

Those people annoyed me. I had been born in a not dissimilar environment, my uncles, my cousins, my father were like that, of a domineering cordiality. They were ceremonious, usually very sociable, very question sounded on their lips like an order barely disguised by a flaw good humour, and if necessary they could be vulgarly insulting and violent.

Recommended - particularly as a taster of Ferrante before immersing in My Beautiful Friend.

Ferrante's own view from La frantumaglia:

Lenu says: "The most difficult things to tell are those which we ourselves cannot understand. "It's the motto - can I call it that - which is at the heart of all my books.

In the book that made me feel most guilty, The Lost Daughter, I pushed the protagonist much farther than I thought I myself, writing, could bear.

The Lost Daughter left me with a feeling the way you do when you swim until you're exhausted and then realise you're too far from the shore.

I still think that the most daring, the most risk-taking book is The Lost Daughter. If I hadn't gone through with that, with great anxiety, I wouldn't have written My Brilliant Friend.

It's no coincidence that when I came to the Neopolitan Quartet I started off again with two dolls and an intense female friendship captured at its beginning.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Troubling Love. The Days of Abandonment. The Lost Daughter. Throw these titles up in the air and whichever lands on whichever book, it would fit. (Not the covers, though: each is uniquely apt.) Ferrante's first-person female narrators could almost be the same woman at different stages of life, except for the three being too close in age and possessing different voices. They are creative women with similar Neapolitan mothers, though with different family ties: single, childless Delia, a cartoonist whose job is barely spoken of, comes from an abusive home; writer Olga, deserted by her husband, has two young children; and here it's a slightly older Leda, a divorced English literature professor with two adult daughters.

Maybe I'm getting used to Ferrante, or more likely it's Leda's dispassionate tone, because I didn't find this one as unsettling as the previous two, though its themes (especially the one at its core) are arguably even more provocative. I admired the novel's circularity and its repetition of lost daughters, including a reference to a story called Olivia if I'm correct in believing it's the Italian folktale that Italo Calvino collected under the title of Olive.*

****
* Please see Heath's comment in message 5 for an Olivia.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I said, "I'm an unnatural mother." She agreed, exclaiming yes, you're an unnatural mother, took the doll from my hands with a fierce gesture of reappropriation

This is Ferrante's deepest and most troubled exploration of motherhood and female roles that I've read to date. From her writings in Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey, she positions this as a response to classical myths that depict women's statuses in life: both the cycles of Hekate, the triple-headed goddess of maiden, mother, crone; and the explicit mythology of Persephone and Demeter, the lost daughter and grieving mother, who also figure the abduction of Kore as an initiation rite to mark the transformation from virgin to married woman. With her Neapolitan upbringing, Ferrante has discussed how these archetypes are embedded deep in her cultural and personal psyche and the wrench involved in excavating, comprehending and resisting them.

Central to this work is the figure of the doll (and dolls appear almost obsessively in Ferrante's work) a multivalent symbol of girlhood being trained, of maternity, and of ambivalence. Leda, the narrator, has had a problematic experience of motherhood where her identity is both bound up in the life of her daughters and, simultaneously, defined in opposition to them. Her 'abduction' of Elena's doll is, thus, a complicated action which draws attention to shifting models and roles of cultural femininity: from the distraught and distressed 'mother' figure (even when the doll's owner is a girl child) to the way the doll defines 'good' and 'bad' archetypes of maternity.

I'm especially interested in the way Ferrante figures Leda's experience in this text as a symbolic katabasis or journey to the underworld, utilising the Persephone myth. The way the roles are transformed and metamorphose foreground the instability of an ideology that women writers have only recently been questioning in public. Leda shifts between Pluto, the abductor, to Demeter the distressed and fierce mother, to recalling her own anxieties as a girl-child of being separated from her mother. The scene where she probes the 'pregnant' doll and pulls out a beach worm is beautifully done with a nuanced reticence that marks Ferrante's style. Without ever overstating or closing down the text, this is left open, fluid and troubling: inviting, even dependent upon, the active participation of the reader to form our own meanings.

[William2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novella starts off reminding me— in terms of the setting only—very much of the longish story “The Beach” in Cesare Pavese‘s The Selected Works, translated by R.W. Flint.

As in the Neapolitan novels, Ferrante again shows in harrowing detail the absolute misery of child rearing. The annoyances, the resentments, the hatreds, to and from both parent and child. It’s like a trap for all involved, a prison. It seems the Italians don’t go in much for psychoanalysis, at least not the characters in Ferrante’s books. But Ferrante knows her characters’ minds, and the truly bizarre scenes they produce. The narrator says:

"For a while I made no distinctions between public areas and private ones, I didn’t care if people heard me and judged me, I felt a strong desire to act out my rage as if in the theater." (p.77)

She is a middle aged woman, a college teacher of English Literature, who begins her story by talking about how liberating it has been for her personally to send her two teenage daughters off to live in Canada with their father, from whom she is bitterly divorced. With regard to another, younger mother whose little girl is throwing a fit at the moment, she says:

"She had tried to see herself in the mirror as she had been before bringing that organism into the world, before condemning herself forever to adding it on to hers. Soon she’ll start yelling, I thought, soon she’ll hit her, trying to break that bond. Instead, the bond will become more twisted, will strengthen in remorse, in the humiliation of having shown herself in public to be an unaffectionate mother, not the mother of church or the Sunday supplements." (p.67)

There’s more.

[Jeanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ewww! This is certainly not a 4 star for enjoyment, but in writing ability and emotive core character layered, nearly a 5. Elena Ferrante is absolutely able to conceptualize, feel, display and express dichotomy of want/repulse, love/hate, scattered self-identity and in other general minutia, the Italian culture's brand of personality disordered woman. This one is vilely unlikable. She was to me. She self-describes as "the unnatural Mother".

It's a state of hurt from both generational directions here in full detail of aftermath. Harsh, loud and blunt. Honestly I would only rec this book if you have high interest in extremely unhappy women within the classic dichotomies of psychological self-identity dislike coupled with perpetual dissatisfaction in life and particularly their role fulfillment. Not just in Motherhood, either.

As excellent a writer as Elena Ferrante is, and she IS genius, she tends to write the same type of woman over and over again. Basically that woman (and they are various ages)- spiteful, vengeful and trouble seeking, apt to cheat and intimidate arising from their own dissatisfaction of both mood and insecurities in work and role. Southern Italian culture and the extended familial patterns of male patriarchy with matriarchal role ideals for intense and long patterned nurturing; those are often the stage for her unhappy women. It's what she knows and she can slice the layers to single cell thinness.

This one was a short novella length that exposed this woman's soul, what she believes about herself and her general self-defeating, quite automatic to me, response. It's one that assuredly earns her more separation and "freedom". But the "freedom" tastes like water from her own solitary poisoned well.

[Lubinka Dimitrova · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best feature of this book was its size. It was small. That much I can say about it. Beyond this, I found the characters utterly annoying, the plot borderline nauseating, and the writing... well, tolerable. I strongly considered creating a "heroine I'd gladly slap" shelf, but it's not worth it. I truly hope that I never become such a person, and even more, that I never meet such a person. Sadly, I'll remain in the dark when it comes to the reason everybody is so delighted with this fictional miss Ferrante.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even in small novels, little more than a short story actually, Elena Ferrante really excels. It strikes me that her main characters always are very 'complexed': always women who struggle with their self esteem, and so also with what others and society in general expects of them, and who particularly are seized by the relationship to their mothers or to their children. In this story Leda absolutely not is a sympathetic character; she bluntly calls herself a bad woman and she has done things that by mainstream standards are really wrong. But Ferrante never condemns her protagonists, on the contrary, she demands respect for them, for their complexity and smallness, and their negative sides. A grand little story this is, beautifully set in a hot summer Italian beach resort. I read this in Italian and it is striking that both in style and in the use of precise words Ferrante really succeeds in going to the heart of the matter.

[Gabriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

La hija oscura es una representación directa de la maternidad y las relaciones entre madres e hijas. Y es buenísimo. Tardé demasiado para leer a Elena Ferrante pero qué gusto da hacerlo.

Es maravilloso como todo el punto de inflexión en la historia del que se puede sacar mucho jugo sea una muñeca, porque precisamente se hacen reflexiones que van desde el refugio y apoyo emocional, el embarazo, la maternidad y la compleja y ambivalente relación de madres e hijas. Hay mucha metáfora y alegoría escondida detrás de un objeto y me parece brutal que a razón de una muñeca hayan las suficientes simbologías punzantes. Eso me gusta demasiado porque demuestra el nivel en el que juega esta autora.

Ahora, no solo es la compleja relación de una madre y sus hijas, de los problemas, las situaciones estresantes y asfixiantes, de lo ajeno y lo parecido o de la incomunicación entre ellas, sino que también habla sobre el ser una buena o una mala madre, de las consideraciones de los demás (y las propias) sobre la maternidad, de las expectativas que trae forjar una o dos vidas en camino y también sobre buscar un propio rumbo, un deseo de tener una existencia desligada del ser madre, y para ello se ve necesario abandonar el matrimonio y a sus hijas por un tiempo para poder encontrarse a sí misma y sobre todo comprenderse.

Y quizás la agridulce conclusión es descubrir que eso que dejaste abandonado era lo que te hacía más feliz de lo que imaginabas. Al final eso explica un poco también el hecho de que la maternidad necesita de mucho tiempo y libertad invertida que no puedes tener para ti, es un sacrificio enorme el que se hace. Sin embargo, cuando las hijas crecen y se está sola viene el proceso de pasar por un duelo y una serie de incomodidades, asimilar el hecho de que le hacen falta, que las extraña y que las necesita a su lado. O de que en su ilusión las hijas la van a necesitar a ella después de tantos años que les dedicó.

[oliv · Rating 4 out of 5]

esse livro explora a maternidade de uma forma profunda, complexa e surpreendente. sinceramente não sei para onde o livro foi no final, mas gostei da história, da escrita e da personagem principal (apesar de-) que era um retrato realista e até um pouco "surreal" do que é ser mãe.

[Cláudia Azevedo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Se não viram o filme, leiam primeiro o livro. Se já viram o filme, esperem ler quase exatamente o que viram, o que retira à leitura de Elena Ferrante toda a surpresa.
Ainda assim, senti que o livro levantou questões que o filme não quis ou não soube evidenciar, sobretudo em relação à boneca, o objeto simbólico da maternidade e da vida gerada, mas também em relação às sexualidade da protagonista, presa entre o passado e o futuro.
Diz-se que, quando uma pessoa está confusa ou perdida, que parece um tolo no meio da ponte. Nunca percebi porque não era no fim ou no princípio, mas sim no meio. Talvez tenha a ver com a confusão que se sente no meio de algo, como na meia idade (o meu caso). Estamos partidos a meio e não sabemos bem se somos ainda o que fomos no passado ou se devemos passar para o nível seguinte, onde não nos encaixamos de todo e não nos revemos.
Pelo contrário, o filme conseguiu retratar melhor a prisão que a maternidade pode ser e o dificílimo equilíbrio entre ser mulher, mãe e ter uma carreira. E como pode ser difícil enfrentar uma criança!
"Uma criança nunca quer somente aquilo que pede; pelo contrário, um pedido satisfeito torna ainda mais insuportável a falta não confessada."
Pela história e pelo modo como é contada, tenho de dar 5 estrelas.

[Maxwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

As all of Ferrante's novels do, The Lost Daughter looks intimately at the complicated nature of motherhood and femininity. Leda, a 47-year old divorcee, is on vacation after her two daughters, now adults, move to live with their father in Canada. She spends her summer by the beach where she meets Nina, a young mother, and her daughter, Lenuccia, who is obsessed with her doll that eventually goes missing. Leda's interactions with this Neapolitan family gets her tied up in something bigger than herself and also forces her to confront her role as mother and the choices she's made in the past. It's a tightly written novel, expertly crafted but lacks the insight and power that Ferrante's other novels have. Overall, an interesting read but not one that will blow you away.

[Alejandra Arévalo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Qué increíble es esta autora. Siempre logra sacar lo peor de los personajes femeninos, lo digo en el mejor de los sentidos, las maternidad no es para todas y una se obsesiona con las cosas más ridículas con tal de hacer miserables a otras personas si es que tú lo eres. Por ahí va esta historia. Me encantaron los monólogos 🫣

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here’s what we know about Elena Ferrante’s narrator, Leda: she’s the middle-aged mother of two grown daughters. Her daughters are living overseas with their father. She is a renowned English Literature scholar. And she is, by her own words, an unnatural mother.

In this searing book, Elena Ferrante courageously confronts one of our social taboos: what happens if, despite all our expectations, we feel diminished by motherhood? What if we choose to abandon our roles? What does that say about us?

Leda reflects, “When my daughters had moved to Toronto, where their father had lived and worked for years, I was embarrassed and amazed to discover that I wasn’t upset; rather, I felt light, as if only then I had definitively brought them in the world.”

During her vacation off the Ionian coast, Leda happens across a boisterous and possibly menacing large family, and fixates on the young dissatisfied mother Nina and her cranky young daughter (..there was something off about the little girl; I don’t know what.”) The first-person narration makes us feel almost like complicit voyeurs as Leda studies the family, ultimately committing a simple act that will be a catalyst for self-examination.

There is a raw and uncompromising honesty as Leda reveals this about her abandonment of her girls, “I was like someone who is taking possession of her own life, and feels a host of things at the same time, among them an unbearable absence.” Yet this cannot be read as a feminist parable, because she quickly follows with this, when asled why she went back, “Because I realized that I wasn’t capable of creating anything of my own that could truly equal them.”

As with Days of Abandonment, another masterful work by Ms. Ferrante, there is ferociously good writing here, laced with a great sense of immediacy and a shockingly honest sense of authenticity. It’s hard to turn away as the narrative propels us to its organic ending.

[emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

a reflection on motherhood and daughterhood that exemplifies the beauty of elena ferrante’s prose.

as women, we are all daughters. we are not all mothers - by choice or by circumstance. this explores what a woman gains and loses as she assumes the role of a mother, and what a daughter is saddled with for life as a result. it is an exploration of torment and of the things that weigh us down when pondering on what could have been and what is.

just impeccable from start to finish.

"sometimes you have to escape in order not to die.”