not contained in this children’s novel. A few weeks back someone reviewed the weird train book from Stephen King’s The Wastelands that provides a creepy atmospheric mythos to the journey at the heart of the longer novel. In a strange way, this little children’s book, which you COULD conceivably read to children if you wanted, does the same thing. Three things that Elena Ferrante writes a lot about are lost kids (metaphorically and literally), dolls, and shoes. This book has all three, but the lost child […]
A book that puts the privilege of my education in stark relief
Whatever “it” is, this book has it. Unsurprisingly, The Neapolitan Novels series has been among the much-discussed darlings of the lit fic world — a world that I largely ignore, as I mainly stick to genre. Despite sounding intriguing enough to prompt me to read it, I still knew very little about it. And so, Elena Greco and Lila Cerrullo came to me freshly conceived, raw and open and complex, out of their run-down and violent neighborhood, seeking an opening to become something more than […]
No Matter Where You Go, You Can’t Get Away
This is the third book of Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet. Elena Grecco, narrates the story from the present, probably at about age 60. Her lifelong friend, Lila, has disappeared in recent months, and she recounts their lifelong relationship. The first two books described their childhood in a poor neighborhood of Naples. The second book follows them as adolescents, their world expands out of the neighborhood and into adulthood, with both girls following very different paths. At the beginning of Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, […]
Hell Hath No Fury…
This is a quick-paced, brutally frank, and sometimes hilarious look at a woman scorned. The first line of the book jumps right into the action — “One April afternoon, right after lunch, my husband announced that he wanted to leave me.” On the surface, this is a story that’s been told a million times. Husband has an affair, leaves wife. Wife feels desperate, sad, angry. Wife starts to feel better and then finds love again. But Ferrante is a brilliant writer who can purposely pick […]