The Lost Daughter

ISBN-13: 9781933372426 / Angielski / Miękka / 2008 / 144 str.

Elena Ferrante

Opis

From the author of My Brilliant Friend
Leda is a middle-aged divorcee devoted to her work as an English teacher and to her two children. When her daughters leave home to be with their father in Canada, Leda anticipates a period of loneliness and longing. Instead, slightly embarassed by the sensation, she feels liberated, as if her life has become lighter, easier. She decides to take a holiday by the sea, in a small coastal town in southern Italy. But after a few days of calm and quiet, things begin to take a menacing turn. Leda encounters a family whose brash presence proves unsettling, at times even threatening. When a small, seemingly meaningless, event occurs, Leda is overwhelmed by memories of the difficult and unconventional choices she made as a mother and their consequences for herself and her family. The apparently serene tale of a woman's pleasant rediscovery of herself soon becomes the story of a ferocious confrontation with an unsettled past.
Following the extraordinary success of The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante's standalone novel The Lost Duaghter candidly explores the conflicting emotions that tie us to our children.

Recenzje

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

O autorze

Ferrante, Elena

Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), which was made into a film directed by Roberto Faenza, Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), adapted by Mario Martone, and The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008), soon to be a film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal. She is also the author of Incidental Inventions (Europa, 2019), illustrated by Andrea Ucini, Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey (Europa, 2016) and a children's picture book illustrated by Mara Cerri, The Beach at Night (Europa, 2016). The four volumes known as the "Neapolitan quartet" (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child) were published by Europa Editions in English between 2012 and 2015. My Brilliant Friend, the HBO series directed by Saverio Costanzo, premiered in 2018.