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| 📕10-word summary: A candid, ferocious, and compelling introspection on womanhood and motherhood. 🖌6-word review: Classic Ferrante voice — quirky and dark. |
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| 💭Compelling quote: “How foolish to think you can tell your children about yourself before they’re at least 50. To ask to be seen by them as a person and not as a function.” | |||||||||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: Camorra, reproof, pareo, tohu-bohu | |||||||||
| Description:* Leda, a middle-aged divorce, 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. Ferrante’s language is as finely tuned and intense as ever, and she treats her theme with a fierce, candid tenacity.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||||||||
| Thoughts: I was prepared for this author’s voice, quirky and dark, from her book The Days of Abandonment, which I read in 2022. My husband watched and reviewed the movie made from this book, starring one of his all-time favorite actors, Olivia Colman, and which was Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s directorial debut. There was a lot packed into the 140-page story, and it’s a rare, refreshing, honest look at women who aren’t completely taken and in love with their own children. Oh, and lest I forget, my pet-peeve overused word made an appearance on p. 18: “They called each other by name with drawn-out cries, hurled exclamatory or conspiratorial comments, at times quarreled: a large family group, similar to the one I had been part of when I was a girl, the same jokes, the same sentimentality, the same rages.” | |||||||||
See the rest of the books I’ve read in 2025 and previous years: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019.