Sunday book pick: The weight of unknowable grief in Elena Ferrante’s debut novel, ‘Troubling Love’
Originally published in the Italian as ‘L’amore molesto’ in 1999, the novel was translated into English by Ann Goldstein and published in 2006.
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Elena Ferrante’s debut novel, Troubling Love, is an oddball. Like her other novels, this too is a deep dive into the psychological relationship between a mother and daughter, but unlike her other novels, the site of this excavation is the body and the mind.
After her mother’s suicide, middle-aged Delia returns to her mother’s home in Naples to piece together her final days. By her own admission, the suicide is rather unoriginal – Amalia (Delia addresses her mother in the first person) has drowned herself. She was found wearing only her bra – an expensive one at that – and her body showed no signs of assault.
After going through the usual post-death rituals, Delia can only think about how she no longer has any “obligation” to worry about her mother. She gets her period during the funeral and whatever grief she might be feeling for her mother is interrupted by the more urgent task of finding a tampon and cleaning herself. The body – for as long as it is alive – demands our complete attention. Even the absolute certainty of death feels redundant against the absolute surety of the corporeal self.
Amalia, the mother
As Delia traverses Naples in search of a washroom, Ferrante’s description of the...
