Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels: Bookmarked

by Gina Frangello

Overview

What is it about Elena Ferrante's writing, especially her masterwork Neapolitan Novels, that resonates so deeply with millions of readers, making this Italian author who writes under a pseudonym with absolutely no "platform" an international sensation?

Brilliantly addressing issues such as class struggle, female friendship, women's autonomy, and literary creation itself, Ferrante's hyperrealist, intense storytelling is a saga of a highly specific place and history, yet somehow also transcends them, resonating on profoundly personal levels with readers of every background.

Gina Frangello grew up in poverty in inner-city Chicago two decades after Ferrante's most famous characters, Lenu and Lila grew up in Naples. Despite these geographic and cultural differences, Frangello felt that Ferrante was "writing about my youth, my life, my relationships, my struggles." 

In the latest volume in the Bookmarked series, Gina Frangello contemplates Ferrante's Neapolitan novels through the lens of memoir, literary criticism, and issues of authorial identity and gender. Should who Ferrante "is" matter? And more importantly, what is it about Lenu and Lila's story that taps into such universal truths that makes readers feel that Ferrante is writing specifically to them? 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632461636
Publisher:	Ig Publishing
Publication date:	07/09/2024
Series:	Bookmarked Series , #18
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	821 KB

About the Author

Gina Frangello's previous book, the memoir, Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason was selected as a New York Times Editor’s Choice, received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and BookPage, and was included on numerous “Best of 2021” lists including at Lithub, BookPage and The Chicago Review of Books. Gina is also the author of four books of fiction, including A Life in Men and Every Kind of Wanting. She lives with her family in Chicago.

Editorial Reviews

The author’s conversational tone and frequent references to episodes in her own life—illuminated by her reading of Lenu and Lila’s odyssey—create an approachable, informed literary”—Kirkus

"Frangello brilliantly finds the personal and the political in her intimate, exciting exploration of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, focusing in on female friendship, culture, desire and longing—and the polarizing question of who and what gender Ferrante really was and who really did the authorship. But more than that, Frangello gets at the bone and heart of why we read, what we expect reading to do for us, and how we interpret a book, a life—be it fictional or real—and our own writing, too. The extraordinary thing about this book is not only did it make me immediately want to reread Ferrante, it made me immediately want to reread Frangello, too. This is required reading for any author or reader, truly."—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and Days of Wonder

“Gina Frangello’s engagement with the Neapolitan novels deliciously blends personal identification with appreciation and literary criticism. Her discussion of the question of pseudonymity and authorship is mind blowingly smart in how it examines different points of view while never losing sight of the achievement of the novel—whoever wrote it. This book should be shelved beside the quartet in every store and library; it’s a great addition to the Ferrante reading experience.”—Alice Elliott Dark

Gina Frangello is just so damn smart. In this extended blended essay: a weaving of memoir, gender criticism, book fashion, art philosophy, literary whodunnit and more, her voice brims throughout with a brilliant, grateful, rage. So many layers! So many delights for the lucky reader. 'The author is dead?' Hell no. This one is, as ever, alive and kicking."—Pam Houston, author, Without Exception: Reclaiming Abortion, Personhood and Freedom

From the Publisher

2024-05-04
What is it about the Neapolitan Novels that accounts for their tremendous appeal?

Novelist and memoirist Frangello, author of Blow Your House Down, chronicles the ways in which we can explore Ferrante’s epic—and how her own reading of the work has changed over time. Viewing the novels, initially, through an autobiographical lens, Frangello relates the parallels between her own life and that of Elena (“Lenu”) Greco, the series’ narrator. Eventually, she realizes that she was sometimes a “Lila,” too, as she reflects on the course of her early life in an Italian American enclave in Chicago and the course of her own friendships with other girls. Approaching the work from several different angles, Frangello dissects the elements of envy and carnal awareness in Lenu and Lila’s intense friendship and ponders the singular, hyperrealist way in which Ferrante focuses on Lila’s character. In a discussion of gender and the violence (sexual and otherwise) visited upon women whose “honor” (and protection against its violation) exists only as a derivative of the primary honor possessed by the men in their lives, the author also examines the role of class in the misogyny the young women endure. Intriguingly, Frangello devotes a substantial portion of her analysis to the myriad theories swirling around the enigmatic Ferrante’s identity and the question of authorship of the Neapolitan saga. The author addresses the theory that Ferrante’s works might actually be a sort of performance art project by married Italian authors Anita Raja and Domenico Starnone, and she believes that ordinary readers don’t need to parse that out for themselves and can leave that question to the critics and scholars. The author’s conversational tone and frequent references to episodes in her own life—illuminated by her reading of Lenu and Lila’s odyssey—create an approachable, informed literary critique.

Good fodder for further Ferrante debates.

Kirkus Reviews