Ann Goldstein

The second book, following last year's My Brilliant Friend, featuring the two friends Lila and Elena. The two protagonists are now in their twenties. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila. Meanwhile, Elena continues her journey of self-discovery. The two young women share a complex and evolving bond that brings them close at times, and drives them apart at others. Each vacillates between hurtful disregard and profound love for the other. With this...

A delightful collection of essays exploring reading and writing. "In the Margins" contains Elena Ferrante's latest reflections on literature, and the works and authors that have influenced her throughout her career.

Once an aspiring writer, Olga traded literary ambition for marriage and motherhood; when Mario dumps her after 15 years, she is utterly unprepared. Though she tells herself that she is a competent woman, nothing like the poverella (poor abandoned wife) that mothers whispered about in her childhood, Olga falls completely apart. Routine chores overwhelm her; she neglects her appearance and forgets her manners; she throws herself at the older musician...

"Giovanna's pretty face is changing, turning ugly, at least so her father thinks. Giovanna, he says, looks more like her Aunt Vittoria every day. But can it be true? Is she really changing? Is she turning into her Aunt Vittoria, a woman she hardly knows but whom her mother and father clearly despise? Surely there is a mirror somewhere in which she can see herself as she truly is. Giovanna is searching for her reflection in two kindred cities that...

When Leda's daughters leave home to be with their father, she decides to take a trip to a small coastal town in Italy, but soon after she arrives memories from her unsettled past come back to haunt her.

Available in English for the first time, a collection of essays offering an extraordinary global view of this great Italian master's approach to writing, reading, and interpreting literature.

Elena and Lila are now adults; life's great discoveries have been made, its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Through it all, the women's friendship remained the gravitational center of their lives. Both once fought to escape the violence and corruption of Naples. Brilliant and bookish, Elena succeeded but has returned to be with the man she always loved. And fiery, uncontainable Lila, who never managed to free herself, has become a successful...

Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, the first of the Neapolitan novels, Elena Ferrante's fame as one of our most compelling, insightful, and stylish contemporary authors has grown enormously. She has gained admirers among authors--Jhumpa Lahiri, Elizabeth Strout, Claire Messud, to name a few--and critics--James Wood, John Freeman, Eugenia Williamson, for example. But her most resounding success has undoubtedly been with readers, who have...