Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Troubling Love

Top positive review

Elena Ferrante is my favorite author!

Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2020

Ferrante captures womanhood I think the best of any author I've read. The way she tells her stories, I'm enthralled by the first page usually. The complicated relationships we have with our families at times, especially one so foundational as a mother daughter relationship, we didn't know others could put into words. I definitely recommend picking up this book, along when any of her other works.

5 people found this helpful

Top critical review

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Robert J. Stone

Strange and unconvincing

Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2021

This author, who writes so compellingly elsewhere, gets lost in her own narrative. This retrospective tale of discovery is hampered by confusing flights of fancy and disjointed storytelling. It comes together somewhat at the end, but not successfully. Try other works by her before wading into this.

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From the United States

Robert J. Stone

Strange and unconvincing

Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2021

Verified Purchase

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Olga Tumanova

Unbelievable and annoying

Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2016

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This is my least favorite of Elena Ferrante's books: overloaded with hallucinations and weird reasoning, looking at the world as if heavily drugged. Unbelievable and annoying. Author probably has first hand knowledge of woman"s mind under stress, affected by drugs, in the state of severe hysteria- taken to extreme and void of substance and reality.

12 people found this helpful

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Mia

Confusing

Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2019

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I have read the 4Neopolitan novels and enjoyed them all. This book i found very confusing, maybe it's just me but I had difficulty in reading it. Sorry to say I did not enjoy this book

5 people found this helpful

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Lamppu

Boring and frustrating. Do we need to know this stuff?

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2018

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Hard to read. I'm sorry I bought it. Why waste one's time reading about such futile lives. Blaah.

2 people found this helpful

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Mics

I love Elena Ferrante Neapolitan series but couldn't finish this book

Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2018

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I love Elena Ferrante Neapolitan series but couldn't finish this book. Maybe it's just me but the plot is not that interesting.

One person found this helpful

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luxlu

Save your dough for the Neapolitan novels instead

Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2016

Verified Purchase

Having devoured the Neapolitan novels and marveled at Ferrante's ability to make us care about the vicissitudes of life in The Neighborhood and the psyches of scrappy, unlikable characters, I was baffled by doting(?)/dotty(?)/self-loathing daughter Delia in Troubling Love, which had me at hello, sagged in the middle and lost me in the end. So much depends on the motif of the stained blue dress, a la Monica. Why? In the end, I don't really care. I felt sympathy for Amalia, I wanted to solve her case, but I didn't like her or any other character. This slender book, published in 1999, preceded the Neapolitan novels. If you haven't read Ferrante's four recent books, don't start with Troubling Love. The Neapolitan novels are master class; this one reads more like a freewrite by a woman in crisis.

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