Elena FerranteMy Brilliant Friend begins right after the second world war in Italy when the areas surrounding Naples are recovering from all of that hardship brought on by war, massive death, and loss. The children grow up under parents who are all hardscrabble poor, working class, putting toget...
E, geniale, è anche lei: Elena Ferrante.Una storia di una amicizia la femminile in un quartiere periferico della Napoli del dopoguerra che è l'inizio di una saga che si dipanerà nei successivi tre romanzi che a questo punto mi toccherà leggere.Ho trovato nella scrittura di questo romanzo tanti ec...
If only I spoke Italian and could read it in the original! I'm told (by someone who did) the use of dialect makes an untranslatable difference in tone and I believe it, but then I'd have to give it 6 stars.The series (there are 4 books, but as of today, only 3 have been translated into English) i...
The over-the-top, it's-awesome-man kind of coverage of the novel by the North American literary establishement of this series, and of the reclusive author, is fascinating in its own right; but beware of overused adjectives and false expectations. There evidently are 'devastating' scenes in this ...
"She is among the greatest Italian authors of recent years."-Corriere della Sera"Ferrante dissects the personal microcosm so well, and with awesome lucidity and precision shows us the meanderings of a woman's mind, the suffering that accompanies being abandoned, and the awful rumbling of time pas...
"Elena Ferrante will blow you away."-Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones From the author of The Days of Abandonment, The Lost Daughter is Elena Ferrante's most compelling and perceptive meditation on womanhood and motherhood yet. Leda, a middle-aged divorce, is alone for the first time in y...
85. Pietro took the three children and me in the car to an ugly house in Viareggio that we had rented, then he returned to Florence to try to finish his book. Look, I said to myself, now I’m a vacationer, a well-off lady with three children and a pile of toys, a beach umbr...
35. This letter disturbed me greatly. Lila’s world, as usual, rapidly superimposed itself on mine. Everything that I had written in July and August seemed to me trivial, I was seized by a frenzy to redeem myself. I didn’t go to the beach, I tried immediately to answer her ...