The arresting third novel from pseudonymous Italian novelist Ferrante (Troubling Love) pursues a divorced, 47-year-old academic's deeply conflicted feelings about motherhood to their frightening core. While on vacation by herself on the Ionian coast, Leda feels contentedly disburdened of her two 20-something daughters, who have moved to their father's city of Toronto. She's soon engrossed in watching the daily drama of Nina, a young mother, with her young daughter, Elena (along with Elena's doll, Nani), at the seashore. Surrounded by proprietary Neapolitan relatives and absorbed in her daughter's care, Nina at first strikes Leda as the perfect mother, reminding herself of when she was a new and hopeful parent. Leda's eventual acquaintance with Nina yields a disturbing confession and sets in motion a series of events that threatens to wreck, or save, the integrity of Nina's family. Ferrante's prose is stunningly candid, direct and unforgettable. From simple elements, she builds a powerful tale of hope and regret. (May)
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The Lost Daughter
Narrated by Hillary Huber
Elena FerranteUnabridged — 4 hours, 57 minutes
The Lost Daughter
Narrated by Hillary Huber
Elena FerranteUnabridged — 4 hours, 57 minutes
Overview
From the author of The Days of Abandonment comes The Lost Daughter, Elena Ferrante's most compelling and perceptive meditation on womanhood and motherhood yet.
Leda, a middle-aged divorcée, is alone for the first time in years when her daughters leave home to live with their father. Her initial, unexpected sense of liberty turns to ferocious introspection following a seemingly trivial occurrence.
Throughout the novel, Ferrante's language is as finely tuned and intense as ever, and she treats her theme with a fierce, candid tenacity.
Editorial Reviews
In this latest from the pseudonymous Italian Ferrante (Troubling Love, 2006, etc.), a middle-aged woman spends her summer vacation meditating about motherhood. Leda was born and raised in Naples, but she didn't feel happy until she escaped at 18 to study in Florence. For her, Florence is a symbol of culture and refinement, while Naples is loud and crude. Now 47, Leda is a university teacher in Florence, long separated from her husband Gianni, another academic, who emigrated to Toronto; her grown daughters, Bianca and Marta, recently joined him, but they stay in close phone contact with their mother. Leda's summer rental is near the sea in an unspecified town. On the beach she observes an attractive threesome: A young mother (Nina), her small daughter (Elena) and the girl's doll, with which the pair play. They are part of a larger group of Neapolitans who are sprawled out on the beach. When Elena disappears, Leda finds her and returns her to her grateful mother, but then steals her doll. What's the reason for this "opaque action"? Does she want to forge a connection to the family, or tap into her own childhood memories? It's a puzzle; not an interesting one, but there it sits, an indigestible lump. Far more interesting is Leda's confession, to these total strangers, that she once abandoned her daughters for three years, leaving them with her overworked husband. What triggered her departure was a London academic conference where she was lionized by a professor, who would become her lover, and felt an intoxicating sense of self. Eventually she realized being a mother was her most significant fulfillment. Freedom versus responsibility: This tension underlies Leda's behavior and ambivalencetoward her daughters, which continues to the present. The young mother Nina is Leda's sounding-board, but Ferrante fails to integrate Leda's soul-searching with the problems of the fractious Neapolitan family on the beach. Does little to illuminate a familiar conflict.
Praise for The Lost Daughter"Elena Ferrante will blow you away."—Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones"Ferrante can do a woman's interior dialogue like no one else, with a ferocity that is shockingly honest, unnervingly blunt."—Booklist
"Ferrante has blown the lid off tempestuous parent-child relations."—The Seattle Times
"So refined, almost translucent, that it seems about to float away. In the end this piercing novel is not so easily dislodged from the memory."—The Boston Globe
"Ferrante's prose is stunningly candid, direct and unforgettable. From simple elements, she builds a powerful tale of hope and regret."—Publishers Weekly
"The Lost Daughter is a resounding success...It is delicate yet daring, precise yet evanescent: it hurts like a cut, and cures like balm."—La Repubblica"The Lost Daughter is a novel about the female condition: the conflicts that can emerge in the sphere of marriage, the extinction of love and passion, the difficult relationships with children, which both obstruct and assist the free expression of one's feelings and the growth towards maturity.”—La Stampa Praise for Elena Ferrante“Elena Ferrante’s decision to remain biographically unavailable is her greatest gift to readers, and maybe her boldest creative gesture.”—David Kurnick, Public Books “Everyone should read anything with Ferrante’s name on it.”—Eugenia Williamson, The Boston Globe “Ferrante has written about female identity with a heft and sharpness unmatched by anyone since Doris Lessing.”—Elizabeth Lowry, The Wall Street Journal “Ferrante has become Italy’s best known writer. In our era of social media accessibility, shameless self-promotion, and hot young celebrity culture, this is nothing short of astounding.”—Gina Frangello, Electric Literature “Ferrante’s writing seems to say something that hasn’t been said before—it isn’t easy to specify what this is—in a way so compelling its readers forget where they are, abandon friends and disdain sleep.”—Joanna Biggs, The London Review of Books “To disagree over the quality of a Ferrante passage is often to run up against what you cannot answer or digest.”—Jedediah Purdy, The Los Angeles Review of Books
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169865073 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 10/06/2015 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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