Elena Ferrante’s
debut novel Troubling Love is a sumptuous reading experience, with some
paragraphs you can almost smell and even taste. Ferrante, the pseudonym of an Italian
writer who wishes to remain anonymous, is a writer I know very little about,
and while I would not call this short 139 page novel a slam dunk, it has at
least gained my interest and has me curious about why this writer has such a
large following. This novel about one woman’s almost unhealthy relationship
with her recently deceased mother is never anything but charming and always had
my interest over its short page count (something that I feel works in its favor
since books like these work better when they don’t overstay their welcome). It isn’t
always the most deep or meaningful book, with its overall themes still being
pretty vague, but it is a very ambitious little book that has a lot of heart. It
begins with Delia, an Italian woman of a certain age having just received news
of her mom Amalia’s death by drowning (a possible suicide) off the coats
Minturno Italy. Her voice is a detached one as she is a pallbearer at her mom’s
funeral that, in the book’s most outrageous scene, gets her period unexpectedly.
Through prose that brilliantly balances linear time and the identity of Delia
and her mom, we see a complex relationship between a mother and daughter in a
regretful retrospect. As I said, this isn’t a very deep book in my opinion. Nothing
really happens and very little resolution is met by the end, even with a pivotal
and riveting scene with he failed artist-marital cuckolded father. I struggled
a bit trying to find a point to it, and with a book that doesn’t have a lot of
action or drama, it can hurt a book. But it is a pretty thing to look at and be
swept away in if you are tempted to pick it up.
Rating: 4/5
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