Synopses & Reviews
Frantumaglia invites readers into Elena Ferrante’s workshop. The bestselling Italian author of My Brilliant Friend opens her desk drawers and offers readers a chance to sort through what they find there. Consisting of over twenty years of letters, essays, reflections, and interviews, it is a unique depiction of an author who embodies a consummate passion for writing.
In these pages Ferrante answers many of her readers’ questions. She addresses her choice to stand aside and let her books live autonomous lives. She discusses her thoughts and concerns as her novels are being adapted into films. She talks about the challenge of finding concise answers to interview questions. She explains the joys and the struggles of writing, the anguish of composing a story only to discover that it isn’t good enough for publication. She contemplates her relationship with psychoanalysis, with the cities she has lived in, with motherhood, with feminism, and with her childhood as a storehouse for memories, impressions, and fantasies. The result is a vibrant and intimate portrait of a writer at work
Review
"...astute, revelatory ruminations." The Guardian
Review
"I’ve always preferred Ferrante’s short novels, especially The Days of Abandonment and The Lost Daughter,...for the companionability of those cleareyed, precise, unsentimental narrators...You can hear something of their voice in Ferrante’s thoughtful simplicity." The New York Times Book Review
Review
“[FRANTUMAGLIA] is an intimate history of her progress between one book and the next; an invitation to sit at her desk and to see as she sees the work she does with words.” The Times Literary Supplement
About the Author
Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008) and the Neapolitan Quartet (Europa 2012-2015). She is also the author of a children’s picture book illustrated by Mara Cerri, The Beach at Night.