Troubling Love

by Elena Ferrante, Ann Goldstein (Translator)

Overview

A woman goes home to Naples after her mother’s mysterious death in a “tour de force” by the New York Times–bestselling author of My Brilliant Friend (Seattle Times).

Following her mother’s untimely and unexplained drowning, which was preceded by a series of strange phone calls, forty-five-year-old Delia leaves Rome and embarks on a voyage of discovery through the beguiling yet often hostile streets of her native Naples. She is searching for the truth about her family and the men in her mother’s life, past and present, including an abusive husband. What she discovers will be more unsettling than she imagines, but will also reveal truths about herself, in this psychological mystery marked by “tactile, beautifully restrained prose” (Publishers Weekly) about mothers and daughters and the complicated knot of lies and emotions that binds them.

“Ferrante’s polished language belies the rawness of her imagery.” —The New Yorker

“With the quick-paced mystery guiding the story, Delia explores her relationship with her mother, unraveling memories and secrets repressed since childhood and coming to terms with an upbringing filled with jealousy and violence . . . Troubling Love is vivid and powerful.” —Library Journal

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781933372167
Publisher:	Europa Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	09/01/2006
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	283,294
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.45(d)

About the Author

Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), which was made into a film directed by Roberto Faenza, Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), adapted by Mario Martone, and The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008), soon to be a film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal. She is also the author of Incidental Inventions (Europa, 2019), illustrated by Andrea Ucini, Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey (Europa, 2016) and a children’s picture book illustrated by Mara Cerri, The Beach at Night (Europa, 2016). The four volumes known as the “Neapolitan quartet” (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child) were published by Europa Editions in English between 2012 and 2015. My Brilliant Friend, the HBO series directed by Saverio Costanzo, premiered in 2018.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Troubling Love

" Troubling Love is a psychological mystery...Ferrante is fascinated by the moments when a personality—like a wire stretched too far from its power source—shorts and corrodes."
—David Lipsky, The New York Times

"A tour de force, Troubling Love is a harrowing tour of a feminine psyche under siege. Together with The Days of Abandonment, it confirms Ferrante's reputation as one of Italy's best contemporary novelists."
—Seattle Times

"With quick-paced mystery guiding the story, Delia explores her relationship with her mother, unraveling memories and secrets repressed since childhood and coming to terms with an upbringing filled with jealousy and violence... Troubling Love is vivid and powerful."
—Library Journal

"Ferrante's polished language belies the rawness of her imagery."
—The New Yorker

"Ferrante delivers a brutally frank tale about the dangerous intersection of rage and desire."
—Booklist

Praise for Elena Ferrante 

“Elena Ferrante’s decision to remain biographically unavailable is her greatest gift to readers, and maybe her boldest creative gesture.”
—David Kurnick,  Public Books
 
“Everyone should read anything with Ferrante’s name on it.”
—Eugenia Williamson,  The Boston Globe
 
“Ferrante has written about female identity with a heft and sharpness unmatched by anyone since Doris Lessing.”
—Elizabeth Lowry,  The Wall Street Journal  
 
“Ferrante has become Italy’s best known writer. In our era of social media accessibility, shameless self-promotion, and hot young celebrity culture, this is nothing short of astounding.”
—Gina Frangello,  Electric Literature
 
“Ferrante’s writing seems to say something that hasn’t been said before—it isn’t easy to specify what this is—in a way so compelling its readers forget where they are, abandon friends and disdain sleep.”
—Joanna Biggs,  The London Review of Books
 
“To disagree over the quality of a Ferrante passage is often to run up against what you cannot answer or digest.”
—Jedediah Purdy,  The Los Angeles Review of Books
 
“Who, in American literature today, deals with the subtleties of class difference in such a painful and sensitive way, while achieving even a fraction of Ferrante’s massive popularity? . . .  We must go to the fictionalized Naples of Ferrante to read the story we want to believe can happen again in our country.”
—Alissa Quart,  BuzzFeed

From the Publisher

The pseudonymous Italian author of Days of Abandonment returns with a daughter's attempt to unlock the mystery of her mother's death by drowning following years of domestic abuse. Days before her body washed ashore near her hometown of Naples, Amalia called her oldest daughter, Delia, now 45, with shocking news that she was with a man-not her estranged husband, a two-bit painter-then hung up, laughing. After the funeral (Amalia's husband doesn't show), Delia goes in search of the story behind the expensive new brassiere Amalia was found wearing at her death, incongruous for a poor seamstress who deliberately downplayed her good looks to avoid arousing her husband's savage jealousy. Caserta, a man who acted as Delia's father's agent as well as rival for Amalia's attention, plays a role here-and in Delia's past. In tactile, beautifully restrained prose, Ferrante makes the domestic violence that tore the household apart evident, including the child Delia's attempts to guard her mother from the beatings of her father. By the time of the denouement, Ferrante has forcefully delineated how the complicity in violence against women perpetuates a brutal cycle of repetition and silence. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Ferrante's second novel (after The Days of Abandonment) opens with the drowning death of Amalia, an aging Italian seamstress and the mother of Delia, the mid-forties narrator. Delia returns from Rome to her hometown, Naples, to make the funeral arrangements. Mysterious details about the death emerge, from Amalia's odd phone calls to Delia just days before to the anonymous calls Delia receives and her encounters with an obscenity-yelling, dirty old man. Delia embarks on a quest to find out how and why her mother died, in the process visiting people and places from her past. With the quick-paced mystery guiding the story, Delia explores her relationship with her mother, unraveling memories and secrets repressed since childhood and coming to terms with an upbringing filled with jealousy and violence. As the title indicates, Ferrante's vivid and powerful descriptions can be somewhat troubling at times, leaving the reader with a memorable sense of unease. Recommended for larger public and academic fiction collections.-Sarah Conrad Weisman, Elmira Coll. Lib., NY Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal