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The Lost Daughter

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About this listen

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 divorcee, 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.

©2006 Edizioni E/O. Translation ©2008 by Europa Editions (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literary History & Criticism Literature & Fiction Fiction
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narrators voice . I found it irritating and detracted from a good story. beautiful descriptions of the place and gave a good feeling of atmosphere .

motherhood

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I love the voice of the narrator, the beautiful style of writing of the author and the pictures that so clearly appear as I listen. But, having read 3 other books by this author I found this one so disagreeable, I only continued with it because was it was short. There was nothing I could relate to in the main character, I just found her quite disgusting.
If you’ve read other books by this author this one will feel familiar but I can’t promise you’ll enjoy it.

Beautifully written but such a thoroughly nasty character

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I find the flat slow American narrator really dull. I’ve had to return other novels because of a similar thing. I’m going to stick with this one though because it is so short. I think I’ll up the speed a little bit - might make it a little more lively!

I’m so glad this is only 4 hours long

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The reader was excellent but I was disappointed that she had an American rather than an Italian accent. Ferrante is a brilliant writer and this was a first class translation. Each sparse phrase worded perfectly to conjure up an emotion, an atmosphere or a description. The protagonist who told the story in the first person, was brilliantly portrayed by the reader as a rather bitter, devious middle aged woman, both elegant and ageing, confident but with poor self esteem. However, I did not enjoy the story which I felt was a rather pointless vehicle for exploring motherhood and women's issues which did not work for me.

Well written and read but an unsatisfactory plot.

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I was interested about this book because I saw the trailer of the film.
However, both the film and the book are half baked.
On one hand there is a good point of female tiredness of handling career and children at the same time, fury that the male counterpart enjoys being separate, fulfilled in his career, freedom, appreciation from society when a female partner is confined to a space of kitchen/ children/ unpaid and u unappreciated job of raising two children.
On another hand - the story with all concerning the beach - is very strange.
And again - for a woman who is highly intelligent, self aware, selfish, reflective - this strange acts of taking the doll, liaising with obviously unpleasant people, giving her apartment for sex etc are kind of out of character, too chaotic, with no obvious motive to them.

So it started well, but progressed into something disappointing.

Strange behaviour

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