“One April afternoon, right after lunch, my husband announced that he wanted to leave me.”
It’s a fine way to start a book. From its first pages, The Days of Abandonment—a slim 2005 novel translated from Italian—is a compelling exploration of frankness, unpredictability and unpredictable frankness. It is the same blithe detachment with which Olga’s husband announces his departure that Olga herself relates to us, the reader, the spiral of grief into which she descends, a spiral so severe as to approach madness.
Once past the suddenness of his announcement, Olga’s husband Mario proves himself to be an otherwise stereotypical soon-to-be-ex spouse: He has abandoned her for a younger woman, proves minimally sympathetic to the injustice of his decision, and becomes almost willfully detached not only from Olga but from their two children, who are old enough to understand their mother’s biting remarks about her defecting husband. Likewise, Olga’s tour through the emotions of the dumped is familiar to anyone who’s suffered through the sudden dissolution of a long-term relationship. Shock and anger give way to obsession and anxiety; depression sets in; small tasks prove monumentally overwhelming.
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