Name: The Lost Daughter
Rating: 3.962962962962963 (27 reviews)

Elena Ferrante

When Leda's daughters leave home to be with their father, she decides to take a trip to a small coastal town in Italy, but soon after she arrives memories from her unsettled past come back to haunt her.

The Lost Daughter

Well written, but a very sad look at life

Rachel Stratton

Compellingly readable as always. Ferrante has an incessant need to examine the female condition from every possible angle and at every possible stage of life. A lot of the themes familiar from her previous works - womanhood, the intelligentsia vs the coarser less educated people, etc. - are present in here, this time represented through the lense of motherhood. Some of this may feel repetitive to casual readers of Ferrante's oeuvre but I really think she is an author whose body of work is worth examining and knowing in its entirety.

Zahra

Yash

This is a short read but packed full of relatable themes of womanhood with more emphasis on motherhood as well as generational trauma. The author did such a profound job of provoking my thoughts and inner psyche throughout the book- that was a disconcerting but amazing read, and it left me with a lasting impression, for weeks, and maybe a long time.

The book can be overwhelming or not, depending on the reader's background or stage of life upon encountering it. Many may bypass the book's actual strengths; for example Leda's decision on "abandoning" her daughters. I see the reasoning behind her decision, and it is that brutal honesty that makes me, as a reader, uncomfortable (it should) but it needs to be discussed more, and the author did a remarkable job extending that so eloquently.

Equal parts validating and triggering—though short, “The Lost Daughter” is not an easy read by any means. I found myself having to pause often, to process and reflect on my own similarities to Leda’s character. Leda’s perspective as a mother isn’t one we hear often, and so it’s quite natural to be taken aback by her candid confessions.

“Her gaze had pulled back abruptly, but without losing me: it had only retreated, as if seeking a distant point, in the depths of her pupils, from which to look at me without risk.”

“The Lost Daughter” is a mirror, and as indicated by the vitriol present in many reviews, the average reader lacks the capacity to see their reflection in it without balking as Nina did, making rash judgements of Leda’s character with little consideration beyond their own discomfort, or rather, their fear of being persecuted for the same transgressions they’re now condemning Leda.

“All the more reason, then, to wonder why I had confessed what was so much my own to strangers, people very different from me, who would therefore never be able to understand my reasons, and who surely, at that moment, were speaking ill of me.”

I believe those who judge Leda’s character as cruel and disturbed have yet to touch the darker places that inhabit their own psyches. I believe, like Nina, they’ve seen a quality in Leda that mirrors something in themselves they’d rather go on pretending isn’t there—understandably so, as we know what happens when women tell the truth, the harsh critiques of Leda’s character being one such example. But I’ve touched those places and I’ve come to the conclusion that, yes, raising children is important, noble even, and it is vital and so very necessary to the continuity of the human race, but no, it isn’t beautiful. It is deeply and profoundly soul-breaking—as Leda says, a shattering—and not everyone can make something vibrant and new out of their broken pieces.

I see a fractured woman—Leda, Nina, myself, even—trying despite our desperate desire to be good mothers, to reconcile the contempt and ambivalence we feel toward children—as everyone so often reminds us—we chose to have. But in a world that recognizes a woman as a lesser, incomplete being unless and until she fractures herself irreparably in motherhood, was it ever really a choice?

“The Lost Daughter” explores the answer to this question, through recollections of childhood trauma and implicit criticisms of the societal expectations placed on women, if one can look past the fear of their own reflection long enough to see it.

“In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument, which he offers to the reader to permit him to discern what, without the book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. The reader’s recognition in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its truth.” — Marcel Proust, Le temps retrouvé

sybil

Equal parts validating and triggering—though short, “The Lost Daughter” is not an easy read by any means. I found myself having to pause often, to process and reflect on my own similarities to Leda’s character. Leda’s perspective as a mother isn’t one we hear often, and so it’s quite natural to be taken aback by her candid confessions.

“Her gaze had pulled back abruptly, but without losing me: it had only retreated, as if seeking a distant point, in the depths of her pupils, from which to look at me without risk.”

“The Lost Daughter” is a mirror, and as indicated by the vitriol present in many reviews, the average reader lacks the capacity to see their reflection in it without balking as Nina did, making rash judgements of Leda’s character with little consideration beyond their own discomfort, or rather, their fear of being persecuted for the same transgressions they’re now condemning Leda.

“All the more reason, then, to wonder why I had confessed what was so much my own to strangers, people very different from me, who would therefore never be able to understand my reasons, and who surely, at that moment, were speaking ill of me.”

I believe those who judge Leda’s character as cruel and disturbed have yet to touch the darker places that inhabit their own psyches. I believe, like Nina, they’ve seen a quality in Leda that mirrors something in themselves they’d rather go on pretending isn’t there—understandably so, as we know what happens when women tell the truth, the harsh critiques of Leda’s character being one such example. But I’ve touched those places and I’ve come to the conclusion that, yes, raising children is important, noble even, and it is vital and so very necessary to the continuity of the human race, but no, it isn’t beautiful. It is deeply and profoundly soul-breaking—as Leda says, a shattering—and not everyone can make something vibrant and new out of their broken pieces.

I see a fractured woman—Leda, Nina, myself, even—trying despite our desperate desire to be good mothers, to reconcile the contempt and ambivalence we feel toward children—as everyone so often reminds us—we chose to have. But in a world that recognizes a woman as a lesser, incomplete being unless and until she fractures herself irreparably in motherhood, was it ever really a choice?

“The Lost Daughter” explores the answer to this question, through recollections of childhood trauma and implicit criticisms of the societal expectations placed on women, if one can look past the fear of their own reflection long enough to see it.

“In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument, which he offers to the reader to permit him to discern what, without the book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. The reader’s recognition in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its truth.” — Marcel Proust, Le temps retrouvé

Leda is a middle-aged divorcée 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 embarrassed 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 seemingly 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 new novel explores the conflicting emotions that tie us to our children. This candid fiction represents her most compelling and perceptive meditation on womanhood and motherhood thus far.

Lauren Attaway

This was a deeply unpleasant read that was nonetheless fascinating.

sarah 🤠

an interesting look at the ambivalent nature of motherhood. ferrante doesn’t shy away from ugly truths, something i always enjoy. 

Leda is a middle-aged, divorced mother devoted to her work as an English professor. After the departure of her grown-up daughters, she takes a holiday on the Italian coast. But after a few days things become unsettling; on the beach she encounters a family whose brash behaviour proves menacing. 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 tale of a woman's rediscovery of herself soon becomes the story of a ferocious confrontation with the past. The Lost Daughter is a profound exploration of the conflicting emotions that tie women to their children.

Elena Garcia Navarro

Olivera Mitić

Elena Ferante je očigledno opsednuta određenim temama i motivima, pa se jedne te iste stvari uporno ponavljaju u njenim knjigama. I ovde imamo jug Italije, jednu Lenuču, lutke, komplikovanu ženu sa komplikovanim međuljudskim odnosima i brojna neka pitanja o majčinstvu. 

Stil pisanja i kvalitet samog teksta su sasvim na mestu, kao i uvek, samo mislim da sam se nakon čitanja 5 njenih drugih knjiga posle ove malo umorila od onoga što je suštinski jedna te ista priča. Nije ovo finalni raskid, ali mislim da Ferante i meni treba pauza jedna od druge, bar na neko vreme.

Sarah Erle

Greg K

Claudia Beneyto

Essence

Maria

Emma

Zeynep Yağmur Bulut

Simran Kalkat

Steph

Leda is a middle-aged, divorced mother devoted to her work as an English professor. After the departure of her grown-up daughters, she takes a holiday on the Italian coast. But after a few days things become unsettling; on the beach she encounters a family whose brash behaviour proves menacing. 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 tale of a woman's rediscovery of herself soon becomes the story of a ferocious confrontation with the past. The Lost Daughter is a profound exploration of the conflicting emotions that tie women to their children. Elena Ferrante was born in Naples. She is the author of seven novels: The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, The Lost Daughter, and the quartet of Neapolitan Novels: My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child. Fragments, a selection of interviews, letters and occasional writings by Ferrante, will be published in early 2016. She is one of Italy's most acclaimed authors. Ann Goldstein has translated all of Elena Ferrante's work. She is an editor at the New Yorker and a recipient of the PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award. 'Ferrante's gift for psychological horror renders it immediate and visceral.' New Yorker 'This superb and scary Italian writer...has blown the lid off tempestuous parent-child relations.' 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.' Boston Globe 'It's Leda's voice that's hypnotic, and it's the writing that makes it that way. Ferrante can do a woman's interior dialogue like no one else, with a ferocity that is shockingly honest, unnervingly blunt.' Booklist 'Ferrante's prose is stunningly candid, direct and unforgettable. From simple elements, she builds a powerful tale of hope and regret.' Publishers Weekly ‘Ferrante’s uncompromising directness and her unflinching gaze cannot be faulted.’ Age/Sydney Morning Herald ‘With cold determination, Ferrante conveys both the selfishness and the courage that comes with admitting your own maternal shortcomings.’ New Zealand Listener

The Lost Daughter

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