[1] The novel tells the story of an Italian woman living in Turin whose husband abruptly leaves her after fifteen years together.

After discovering that the other woman Mario is having an affair with is the daughter of one of his colleagues, whom he met when she was fifteen, Olga begins to have a breakdown.

Afterwards, Olga begins a long introspective journey to analyze the years with her husband, to find errors and gaps that could have created his desire to leave.

Her past and her childhood fears return to torment her, together with the idea that a woman without love, without a man, can't survive.

Olga accidentally jams the key in the lock and realizes that she cannot call for help as her phone line is down and her cellphone is broken.

She finds herself completely unable to focus but eventually pulls out of it and, when her downstairs neighbor comes by to check on her, is able to open the door herself.

Helped by her neighbour, Aldo Carrano, Olga resolves each problem and begins that day to fight to restore the pieces of herself, to care again for her son and daughter, and to recreate civil bonds with her now-ex-husband.

From the beginning, this desire for self-control clearly appears in Olga, through her attempts to control language, to free herself from her Neapolitan accent, and to even forget aggressive idioms or tones of voice.

Republished as Cronache del mal d’amore, in a volume that included also the novels Troubling love and The Lost Daughter.

[9] Critic Radhika Joneslena has praised the book, saying: "In novelist Elena Ferrante's hands, being abandoned is not a passive condition.

Left with two children and with little explanation by her husband, Mario, Olga juggles anger, denial, capitulation, and desperation as she seeks to understand her predicament through an exploration of her past-not only her marriage, but the specter of an abandoned woman who haunted her childhood.

The two novels deal with unravelling marriages from different perspectives, and Starnone was often especulated to have been the person or one of the people behind the pseudonym Elena Ferrante, which he has denied.

According to The New Yorker: "Starnone coyly pointed out that both Ties and Days of Abandonment contain the precise detail of a glass vessel, which each wife breaks in response to her husband’s faithlessness.