Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Currently Reading: Troubling Love


My love for Elena Ferrante novels is well known around these parts and this book of hers I'm reading right now only amplifies the respect I have for her words and writing style. It's unlike anything I've read by other authors; her descriptions, the way she weaves seamlessly through time, and the deeply personal thoughts and feelings that most people experience but leave unsaid are hallmarks of her prose.

This novel, Troubling Love, takes place in Ferrante's native Italy and follows the story of a woman, Delia, trying to find out the truth about her mother's mysterious death by drowning. Of course, the reader is given insight into complicated relationships between mother and daughter as well as buried childhoods memories, such as watching her father nearly kill her mother's lover and budding sexual relationships as an adolescent.

Among the first clues in Delia's possession, is a bag of lingerie that, even though it belongs to her mother, is uncharacteristic of the deceased woman. Aside from that, Ferrante develops all the odd characters that are necessary in a story such as this: a one-armed uncle, an abusive husband who claims to act out of love, a nosy neighbor who might know more than she says, a childhood playmate who becomes more, and an old man who may have started it all.

The book is not very long, only 139 pages. I'm going through it slowly, though, in an attempt to catch every words, phrase, and reference because this is a book that you could read 100 times and find something new with each read.

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