Really liked the first one, just finished the second and it dragged in the middle, I briefly thought it was going to go all chick-lit. Last 1/3 made good on the bleak and traumatic promise of the first 40 pages though. Bookshop owner told me the third one was the most light-hearted of the four - yay? - going to take a break though.
― ledge, Sunday, 14 February 2016 18:19 (eight years ago) link
Are you still able to read, ledge? Because ...
― Have I The Right Profile? (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 14 February 2016 18:21 (eight years ago) link
Yeah, for a month or so...
― ledge, Sunday, 14 February 2016 18:49 (eight years ago) link
It could be a long break.
― ledge, Sunday, 14 February 2016 18:50 (eight years ago) link
Why did you think it was going to go all chick-lit and what do you mean with "chick-lit"
― abcfsk, Monday, 15 February 2016 06:00 (eight years ago) link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_lit - actually i probably meant more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mills_%26_Boon - just during the more floridly romantic passages on the holiday in Ischia, only a couple of pages and I knew it wouldn't last.
― ledge, Monday, 15 February 2016 09:05 (eight years ago) link
Scroll down for something amazing that did not quite happen:http://www.westsidespirit.com/city-arts-news/20150819/new-and-in-charge-at-symphony-space
― Thank You For Cosmic Jive Talkin' (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 19 February 2016 06:22 (eight years ago) link
just finished the first one. thought it was really magnificent. really put me through the wringer in places: the constant atmosphere of male violence, and the oppression of poverty, the inexorable neighbourhood squabbles and feuds.
wonderful climax, the protagonist coming to a realization of not belonging to her neighbourhood by virtue of her intelligence and education. the very last part about the shoes at the wedding.
― Cornelius Pardew (jim in glasgow), Thursday, 25 February 2016 22:30 (eight years ago) link
i can already tell that shitbag nino sarratore is going to be a shitty boyfriend
and stefano a shitty husband
― Cornelius Pardew (jim in glasgow), Thursday, 25 February 2016 22:32 (eight years ago) link
I should start the second one in the middle of next week. I'm looking forward to participating, for at the moment I don't have anything but "It was OK" to write about the first.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 25 February 2016 22:41 (eight years ago) link
i already like the 2nd book better. the aftermath of the party at the teacher's house - oof! such a huge thing for the narrator and lila just rips it to shreds in the car. ouch!
― scott seward, Friday, 26 February 2016 21:08 (eight years ago) link
aha! or not.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/14/books/who-is-elena-ferrante-an-educated-guess-causes-a-stir.html?hpw&rref=books&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
― scott seward, Sunday, 13 March 2016 23:06 (eight years ago) link
He said he had embarked on his analysis after spending time in the company — or rather the shadow — of Ms. Ferrante last year, when both his novel, “Come Donna Innamorata” (“Like a Woman in Love”) and Ms. Ferrante’s “The Story of the Lost Child” made the five-book shortlist for the Strega Prize, one of Italy’s top literary awards. Both lost to “La Ferocia,” (“Ferocity”) by Nicola Lagioia.
so he was stalking his competition...
― sciatica, Monday, 14 March 2016 00:48 (eight years ago) link
Jeff Vandermeer Googles her location:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CdiwRv2WEAAVryK.jpg:large
― dow, Monday, 14 March 2016 22:53 (eight years ago) link
good post about the novels' covers:
Another way to put this is that the Neapolitan novels, which are about poor women with restricted access to education (and the class mobility that aesthetic taste enables), look like books that might be sold to poor women with restricted access to education. Note that literati readers love to identify with the characters, Lila and Lenu, who are women who use reading to escape their lives. So why are we so unwilling to consider ourselves to be anything like the women who are Lila and Lenu’s real world reading counterparts? Why are we so determined to stand against their reading practices and aesthetic tastes?
http://avidly.lareviewofbooks.org/2016/03/25/this-week-in-ferrante/
― donna rouge, Friday, 25 March 2016 18:04 (eight years ago) link
nobody listens to me when i tell them this but you should read 'Days of Abandonment' first, Alfred. it's wild.
― flopson, Thursday, January 28, 2016
Took your advice.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 25 March 2016 20:19 (eight years ago) link
very glad to hear it!
― flopson, Friday, 25 March 2016 21:45 (eight years ago) link
I've now heard this thing a few times about the covers -- I guess I don't get it, I feel like the covers are very subdued and look very much the way I expect "tasteful literary fiction" to look.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, 25 March 2016 22:18 (eight years ago) link
same
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 25 March 2016 22:23 (eight years ago) link
Seems like if Lina-Lila ever really thought she could "escape through reading," gave it up pretty early. When she eventually tunnels into the deep history of Naples, more like material for her secret writing and getting further inside the place and space she's never left, and tried to find a way to control (incl. reading early computer manuals), despite tirades about the basic chaos, and how everything else is a fuckin' lie.The cover of the first one, with a stately marriage procession proceeding to the edge of a cliff, as good old Vesuvius drowses across across the bay, as usual, turns out to be very appropriate. Covers of the others, with generic greeting card romance, seem like more examples of that xpost Ferrante humor, considering contrast with contents.
― dow, Friday, 25 March 2016 23:05 (eight years ago) link
I feel like the covers are very subdued and look very much the way I expect "tasteful literary fiction" to look.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, March 25, 2016 6:18 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, March 25, 2016 6:23 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
don't know that i agree. got any examples?
i'm not sure what "books that might be sold to poor women with restricted access to education" would look like. personally i imagine some raunch harlequin novels? that's probably classist and sexist of me...
the neapolitan covers look plain in a way that is not quite of this time, they make me think of like, the literary equivalent of old soap operas. but i don't associate that style with the covers of contemporary tasteful literary fiction. i'm bad at describing design but i think the trends in contemp lit fic book covers are like: stencils, rough textures, blurred photos of the sea or forests, the indie comics aesthetic...
http://slimpaley.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/donna-tartt-the-goldfinch-book-cover.jpg?w=870http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/t/the-flamethrowers/9781439142004_custom-7e81f0840812e7c2097afb8f1ed7955662489442-s300-c85.jpghttp://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Wood-Best-Books-of-2015-1200x822-1451928637.jpg
― flopson, Friday, 25 March 2016 23:21 (eight years ago) link
don't care about covers tbh
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 25 March 2016 23:22 (eight years ago) link
i care about spines
― flopson, Friday, 25 March 2016 23:23 (eight years ago) link
yep!
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 25 March 2016 23:31 (eight years ago) link
I agree the cover doesn't look very "designed" the way lit fic from big presses do. I guess I'm saying it reminds me more of something you'd see from a university press. Like, isn't the cover type actually Times New Roman?
The point is, it's definitely not something that would be mistaken for "the kind of book marketed to poor and lower-middle-class women."
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, 26 March 2016 13:57 (eight years ago) link
i paid almost 80 bucks for all four books so definitely not priced for poor people. i justified it cuz i only buy new books about once a year.
― scott seward, Saturday, 26 March 2016 14:58 (eight years ago) link
have now finished all four, best thing i've read in don't know how long
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, 2 April 2016 13:14 (eight years ago) link
wonder what she'll do next
― hot doug stamper (||||||||), Saturday, 2 April 2016 15:40 (eight years ago) link
Is this a literary thing or more young-adult?
― calstars, Saturday, 2 April 2016 19:22 (eight years ago) link
I loved Days of Abandonment, most especially because it didn't present its heroine as virtuous.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 2 April 2016 19:28 (eight years ago) link
The covers look aspirationally literary. See my mom's bookshelves. My mom isn't a poor woman with restricted access to education, but she was once.
― bamcquern, Saturday, 2 April 2016 19:44 (eight years ago) link
xp- i love how it's a book about a mother but it's not about being a mother; she finds no comfort in the love of her children. the kids are just background noise in the frantic haze, just another constraint in the balancing act, placed there to add to the chaos.
― de l'asshole (flopson), Saturday, 2 April 2016 20:17 (eight years ago) link
Is this a literary thing or more young-adult?― calstars, Saturday, April 2, 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― calstars, Saturday, April 2, 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Well its easy-to-read, but a lot of literature is easy to read.
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 2 April 2016 21:36 (eight years ago) link
Not long afterward, the underground war that occasionally erupted into the newspapers and on television - plans for coups, police repression, armed bands, firefights, woundings, killings, bombs and slaughters I was struck again by in the cities large and small.
Eh?
― I wanna whole Dior hand (ledge), Wednesday, 15 June 2016 12:35 (seven years ago) link
I presume the narrator's referring to the Years of Lead.
― one way street, Wednesday, 15 June 2016 12:54 (seven years ago) link
I presume she is trying to say "Not long afterward I was struck again by the underground war...", there must be a missing dash after 'slaughters' but even then 'in the cities large and small' is entirely out of place.
― I wanna whole Dior hand (ledge), Wednesday, 15 June 2016 12:58 (seven years ago) link
ows posted a link of commentary as it relates to Knausgaard, here is the stuff on Ferrante: http://173.254.14.229/2015/06/the-slow-burn-an-introduction/
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 19 June 2016 10:24 (seven years ago) link
Just read the first post, which is brilliant, thanks. Right about the resistance to settling on/into one identity, and reminds of EF interviews re finding the freedom of the two main characters (exchanging etc., as the commentator says here)(but also on and off what becomes their own tracks, as they live so long). Judging from excerpts of novels before this quartet, their one or dominant narrative voice was more like Lila/Lina, or maybe even like Lina/Lila and Lenu/Elena G. simultaneously, trapped in the same body---anyway, the two lifelines provide more range, it seems (though I'll have to read those earlier books).
― dow, Sunday, 19 June 2016 19:21 (seven years ago) link
Finished 3, the soap opera is strong with this one. As is the irony, that just as she is on the verge of becoming a feminist crusader, just as she realises what a chauvinist nino is being, just at the exact moment that she goes to give him a piece of her mind... she falls into bed with him. Ferrante sells it though. Certainly rings more true than the end of The Bostonians.
― I wanna whole Dior hand (ledge), Wednesday, 22 June 2016 12:44 (seven years ago) link
Yeah, for sure, but also, the husband seems like such a foole at first, and he is---but not, as also seems at first, lol Casaubon and he's done, son---no.he actually, maybe starting when he doesn't back down from the student---oops spoiler for others---well he has his own bit of dumb stubborness/luck--->saving grace under pressure=adaptablity---needs a whole lot more of this last, but---well, you'll see in 4. Also: her child-rearing, also her not child-rearing practices...
― dow, Wednesday, 22 June 2016 16:29 (seven years ago) link
well this sucks
― j., Sunday, 2 October 2016 19:33 (seven years ago) link
The allegation about her identity? I agree; it seems like a pointless violation of Ferrante's privacy.
― one way street, Sunday, 2 October 2016 19:49 (seven years ago) link
Went through her thrash - very tabloid. NYRB publishing this reflects v badly on them - the excuse this is being published in other newspapers in different languages doesn't scan. Not sure what other line they can take to defend it. The accompanying article on Raja's family I have not read but it begins by stating that "There are no traces of Anita Raja’s personal history in Elena Ferrante’s fiction", which assumes I would be looking for that when reading her books.
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 2 October 2016 20:58 (seven years ago) link
EF's been quoted to the effect that she wouldn't stop writing if outed, but she would stop publishing.
― dow, Sunday, 2 October 2016 21:07 (seven years ago) link
YES
i would rather enjoy resenting and blaming whatsisname for the rest of my days until her estate publishes her posthumous books
― j., Sunday, 2 October 2016 21:39 (seven years ago) link
Reckon she'll burn 'em before dying. Nothing less than what we deserve.
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 2 October 2016 21:47 (seven years ago) link
This is kind of awful. I can think of at least one other writer that some of us have read who was unable to write after their cover was blown
― Berberian Begins at Home (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 4 October 2016 03:54 (seven years ago) link
And of course in this situation the damage is magnified a hundredfold.
― Berberian Begins at Home (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 4 October 2016 03:55 (seven years ago) link
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ct5Tte5XgAAIGPl.jpg
― j., Tuesday, 4 October 2016 04:36 (seven years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tJGk4ofc18
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 4 October 2016 07:10 (seven years ago) link