When the relationships you have carefully nurtured fall apart
Olga’s marriage, nurtured at the sacrifice of her own identity, falls apart as her husband abandons his family for a younger woman. Ferrante has no penchant for subtlety or the cliché of delicate femininity. She throws all the anger of abandonment at your face – the rage at having given everything and having got back nothing. The ugliness of absolute deterioration as she fails at every minor duty. The infallibility and confidence of being a man; the vulnerability of being a woman. A society that expects her to forgive, forget and recover. The anger is not just Olga’s, but every woman’s.