Awaiting Ferrante: Femininity Toxic and Nourishing

Followers of fiction are probably already well aware that the English-language translation of Elena Ferrante's latest novel, "The Lying Life of Adults," will be released in the U.S. in June.

It has already been published as "La Vita Bugiarda Degli Adulti" in Italy and is apparently enjoying considerable success in that market.

I was reminded of this when reading a profile of Edie Falco, probably best known as the wife of the mob boss in "The Sopranos," in the Sunday New York Times of Jan. 9, 2020. The profile consisted largely of a list of 10 things Falco said she could not live without and third on the list was "Elena Ferrante's Books."

"She really seemed to get all the complexities of relationships with girls that are fraught and deep and toxic and nourishing. I'd never seen it depicted in a way that I recognized quite as accurately," Falco is quoted saying.

The new novel is again set in Naples, but this time the chief protagonist, an adolescent girl named Giovanna, is from a family that is well off economically. According to an article in The Washington Post, the new book will largely satisfy Ferrante fans with fraught friendships, heady descriptions of Naples, and "wow-she-went-there" ways of depicting family.

One can ague that Ferrante has an exceptionally dark view of human nature as I do here. (Please click on the word "here" at the end of that sentence.)