Elena Ferrante: The Story of the Lost Child

The 4th instalment in Elena Ferrante's Naples series hits this bookshops tomorrow and I'll be there to pick it up. I'm not writing a review of it today (not that I write reviews here really) but I did want to remind those who've read and and become fans of Ferrante to check out The Story of the Lost Child from Europa Editions.

Ferrante's books came onto my radar some time ago but after I started writing about her last year, several people picked up her books and told me that they really liked them a lot. At least eight people stopped me at the Festival in 2015 to thank me for introducing her here and on my social media.

Not everyone has raved about her: one person whose opinion I trust a lot told me that she just couldn't connect with the two young girls in My Brilliant Friend. Another person, a friend, told me that she didn't really connect with the books until about 1/3 of the way through the 2nd one, The Story of a New Name. Fair Enough. Not every book speaks to every reader. But the vast majority of people have really liked them a lot and become a bit crazy about the Naples series in particular.

We did an Elena Ferrante Breakfast at the 2015 Festival which was one of our biggest breakfast events ever. We generally try to keep these breakfast events at 10-12 but 27 people showed up to that one! And a very interesting discussion ensued (participants kept asking if the host was really Elena Ferrante which made us laugh hysterically afterwards).

Given the fact that Ferrante refuses to do publicity and is highly mysterious, when she does rarely agree to give an interview, it's a big deal. She spoke to the Paris Review several months ago and Vanity Fair managed to score an interview here as well. This one I find better than the Paris Review interview because there is so much about the friendship at the core of the books. But I wouldn't read them until you've read the books because lots is given away (not spoilers per se but one of the pleasures of reading the books is simply going in blind and discovering the world for yourself). Scott Esposito has a review here on SF Gate of the latest.

For those who aren't familiar with the series, they chart the friendship of two girls in Naples in the 1950s and each new instalment traces the women's relationships through the ups and downs of late 20th century Italian history. But that makes the books sound dry and detached and they are far from either.

The Story of the Lost Child is released tomorrow.

The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

Being a big fan of Ferrante's work and having read all volumes available in her Naples series, I reached back into her early work and read The Days of Abandonment.

I had a very different relationship with this one: it's too dark for me, too personal, too bitter.

I heard John Waters say once that Elena Ferrante was one of his favorite "angry women writers" and having only read her Naples series then, I found this comment puzzling. The series isn't necessarily "angry" at all. Certainly there are moments of anger but the book is far more complex than anger.

But after reading The Days of Abandonment, I can see what he meant: the protagonist relates the story of a short period of time she went through after her husband left her. The opening line:

One April afternoon, right after lunch, my husband announced that he wanted to leave me.

Olga, the protagonist, then falls into a mental abyss of fear, anger, doubt and pain. It's like one furious rant from beginning to end.

I am so glad I started with her Naples series which, to my mind, is far more interesting.

I don't know why I couldn't relate to this novel as well: the anger? The specifics of the experience? Olga's experience feels somewhat dated since she seems to have no life or interest or friends outside of her family life. I don't know if that would be a common experience in contemporary Italy but it certainly doesn't seem like it would be that common in North America.

It's a short, zippy book that can be read in a couple of evenings. Though be prepared for lots of negativity!

All this leads to our very special Elena Ferrante Brunch which we are doing as part of Blue Met 2015. Lynne Robson, former correspondent for The National, hosts the brunch and it'll be a great opportunity for anyone who's a fan of Elena Ferrante (or would like to become a fan perhaps) to come, discuss her work, meet other fans. The event is on Saturday late morning, April 25. It costs $25 and includes breakfast. But move fast: our breakfast/brunch events usually sell out. Tickets go on sale a week from today and can be bought at La Vitrine.

Blue Met's A Year in Reading: from Ferrante to Adelstein, Luiselli to Benedetti

Since everyone else seems to be doing it, I thought I'd weigh in on my personal favorites for 2014:

Best 2014 comfort reader: Eileen Chang's Half a Lifelong Romance: I've long been a fan of Eileen Chang, but this novel, which dates from the middle part of Eileen Chang's career, was a new one for me. It appeared in serial form in the 1950s but is set in 1930s Shanghai and tells the story of a doomed love affair in the tumultuous period leading up to the Chinese Civil War. It's a tale of a young woman trying hard to live life according to her own terms in a society where women are diminished and dismissed. It's not a perfect novel but it's engaging a fascinating tale of power, love and fate.

Best  2014 binge-read: Elena Ferrante's Neopolitan novels: in 2014 I read the first three books in a few months and was absolutely riveted by them. They tell the story of a friendship (sometimes enemy-ship) of two girls growing up in 1950s Naples (the first book starts then, the third book ends in the late 70s) while one girl manages to pull herself out of the neighborhood through study and hard work, the other relies on pluck and street smarts. It's the story of an Italy that's long gone, but also romantic & violent.

Best 2014 discovery: the work of Valeria Luiselli. One of Mexico's most promising up and coming Faces in the Crowd is still with me months after I read it. It is a fascinating novel that looks at time, art, writing and fate/choice. This is a writer who I will be watching for years to come because everything she's written so far is interesting.

Best 2014 shocker: A True Novel by Minae Mizumura: this novel is a retelling of Wuthering Heights set in post-war Japan. But that really diminishes the book in a certain way because it's only a tiny fraction of what's interesting about this book: it's fascinating formally and one keeps asking oneself throughout the book: is this the novel or the story on which the novel is based? Is this real? Then one wonders what real actually means: is anything real? But I'm making the book sound pedantic or possibly boring. It's anything but. It's an excellent novel that I highly recommend.

Best 2014 Guilty Pleasure (and best 2014 book by a man?!): The Rest of Jungle & Other Stories by Mario Benedetti: I loved this book. It's a collection of stories by a Uruguayan writer whose work is hard to pin down: it's about middle class love affairs, about jungle adventures in the bush, it's about office workers stuck in bureaucratic hell, it's about animals who are bitchy and judgmental.

Best 2014 non-fiction journalism: Tokyo Vice: an American Reporter on the Police Beat by Jake Adelstein: Adelstein is one of the only foreign reporters ever hired by a Japanese newspaper and he tells the tale of his work for one of Tokyo's biggest daily newspapers, including his involvement in writing stories about Yakuza and other sordid Japanese adventures.

New Elena Ferrante out today!

I am crazy about this Neopolitan tetralogy by Italian writer Elena Ferrante.

The novels chronicle the friendship between two girls growing up in Naples in the 1950s and through the 60s (I just finished the 2nd novel which ends in the late 60s). They are fascinating books and they detail a world that has vanished: a violent, rough and tumble neighborhood of working class kids in poverty who rarely, if ever, have the chance to get out and improve their lives.

Lina, the best friend, is from a desperately poor background and her best friend, Elena (the novels' protagonist), is no better. They are connected through their intelligence (it's never clear who "My Brilliant Friend" is supposed to refer to exactly: at times Lina seems the more brilliant one, though Elena is the one who manages to "get out" of the neighborhood through her intelligence and hard work) but their relationship is complex and contradictory, full of betrayals and resentments.

Anyone who's ever had a lifelong friend will relate to these books: the complex ways we love someone, the ways in which we compete, even if we don't want to.

I kept thinking of my first few years in Montreal: I was working at a community centre in Verdun and so many kids (people) who were born there never leave: they get pregnant at 16 or 17, get married, move a few doors down from their families and just stay. Once when some kids asked me where I lived and I said near McGill, they almost acted amazed that I lived "so far away," and only one had ever been there (once). I hardly ever go to Verdun nowadays and I wonder if things have changed much...

Of course, Verdun isn't nearly as violent as Naples of the 1950s but it reflects a similar kind of mentality: never put on airs, never try and forget where you come from. How place (poverty, dialect) is both a mark of identity and a limitation. How place is as much a badge as gender or race (maybe more so). It's something that North Americans, perhaps, don't quite understand in the same way as Italians which is so regional. In Verdun I witnessed a small aspect of it though perhaps it is something Canadians can grasp in a more limited way.

Another thing which struck me was the simple fact that violence is impossible to get away from: all the kids are beaten by their parents and then they get married and their husbands beat their wives and the wives beat their children. It's just the way life is. But that's not to say that the books are depressing or self-pitying, not at all. They are funny, moving, intelligent and the kind of book where you have to stop now and then and just reflect on what the author's doing or trying to communicate.

I raced through the first two novels and wanted moremoremore. The 3rd novel in the series (Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay) is out today but I am battling with myself: I want to read it but I also want something to look forward to reading over the Christmas break. So we'll see how long I can hold out.