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Where to start with Elena Ferrante: a guide to her best books
Her Neapolitan Quartet has been hailed as the one of the best fictional series of all time, drawing comparisons with Balzac and Dickens. Here, discover how to begin exploring Ferrante’s remarkable body of work
Celebrated for her evocative explorations of friendship, womanhood and class, Elena Ferrante has captivated readers worldwide with her unflinching depictions of life in Naples, her hometown, in the second half of the 20th century. Her work, renowned for its raw honesty and emotional depth, vividly brings the city’s vibrant streets and complex characters to life.
Ferrante’s influence is undeniable. She was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2016 after her bestselling series, the Neapolitan Quartet came to a close. The final installment, The Story of the Lost Child – which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2016 – was hailed as ‘Ferrante at the height of her brilliance’ by Vanity Fair’s Elissa Schappel, while NPR’s Maureen Corrigan described its ending as a ‘perfect devastation’.
More recently, The New York Times ranked My Brilliant Friend, the first book in the series, as the best book of the 21st century, underscoring Ferrante’s impact on contemporary literature. And with over 14 million copies sold, the Quartet has cemented Ferrante’s position as one of the most significant – and popular – voices of our time.
Ferrante’s disdain for publicity and belief that ‘once-written, books have no need of their authors,’ have only added to her allure. Ultimately, her identity feels irrelevant when her work speaks for itself. So whether you’ve read the Neapolitan Quartet or are just getting acquainted with Ferrante’s work, our comprehensive guide can help you decide where to turn next.
The city of Naples
©️ AlamyIf you want to understand ‘Ferrante fever’
The first book of Ferrante’s highly successful Neapolitan Quartet, My Brilliant Friend, published in 2011 and translated by Ann Goldstein, follows the often tumultuous friendship between Lila and Lenù during their school years in a poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples in the 1950s. It’s a bond that critic James Wood, writing in The New Yorker, describes as ‘a rich and complicated tangle of envy, admiration, disappointment and abandonment.’ The two girls learn to rely on each other as their friendship, beautifully and meticulously rendered, becomes an imperfect shelter from hardship. An international bestseller, My Brilliant Friend was the catalyst for the global literary phenomenon known as ‘Ferrante fever’.
The story of Lenù and Lila continues as they each pursue their respective paths in the second book of the series, The Story of a New Name, translated by Ann Goldstein and published in 2012. While Lila is recently married and working in the family business, Lenù has continued her studies and is determined to explore the world beyond her neighbourhood. Love, jealousy, family, commitment, and above all, friendship, all come to the fore as the two women live out this essential phase of their lives. ‘There are few writers who so acutely and seductively frame the eternally wounded, stupidly brave teenager inside a grown woman’s heart,’ wrote Minna Proctor, reviewing the novel for BookForum.
The third installment in the series, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, translated by Ann Goldstein and released in 2013, is set in the late 60s and early 70s during times of dramatic change in sexual politics and societal norms. As Lenù, now a graduate of an elite college and a successful writer, sees unimaginable doors opening to her, Lila fights to build a new life after separating from her husband, while struggling to come to terms with her unfulfilled potential. The two women’s friendship is repeatedly tested as they struggle with rivalry and their own, and each other’s, expectations. It’s a novel the Los Angeles Times called a ‘book of evidence, the effects of the past told, never shown, and yet it remains compelling, visceral and immediate.’
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2016, The Story of The Lost Child is the heart-wrenching series finale of Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet. Lila and Lenù are now established adults, with husbands, lovers, and children. Lenù’s life is now in Florence, but feeling unsatisfied with her circumstances, she returns to Naples, drawn to the city’s complex magnetism and returning to an old lover. Lila, a successful entrepreneur, battles with the chauvinism and criminal violence that infects her neighbourhood. Despite their struggles and very different experiences, friendship has remained the gravitational centre of both women’s lives. The International Booker Prize 2016 judges called the novel ‘a veritable feast’ while the Washington Post claimed it was ‘the essential volume’ of the series, describing it as ‘a knowing and complex tale that encompasses an entire metropolis’. The whole collection of novels sold over 15 million copies and has been published in 45 different languages.
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If you want to explore her early works
Ferrante’s debut novel, Troubling Love, was originally published in Italian in 1992 and later translated into English in 2006 by Ann Goldstein. Exploring the complicated lies and secrets between a mother and daughter, the book was described by The New York Times as being ‘soggy with tears’ and ‘the blank mood that follows a good long cry.’ After Delia’s mother’s untimely death, she sets off on a breathtaking odyssey through the chaotic streets of Naples to reconcile her mother’s blurry past with the mysterious events leading up to her death. Facing the possibility that her mother was not at all the person Delia believed her to be, she untangles a web of secrets that reveal a series of hidden family truths.
The first of Ferrante’s novels to be translated into English by Ann Goldstein, The Days of Abandonment , published in 2005, was considered to be her most popular novel before the fervour that greeted the Neapolitan Quartet. After her husband leaves her for another woman, Olga descends into a dangerous freefall as she confronts her ghosts, the potential loss of her own identity, and the possibility that life may never return to normal again. A story of destruction and survival as poignant as it is unforgettable, The Days of Abandonment provides readers with an intense portrayal of heartbreak and deep insight into Olga’s unravelling.
The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein
If you want to delve deeper into family dynamics
First published in 2006, The Lost Daughter is a story that explores the complexities of motherhood and identity. When Leda’s daughters leave home, she anticipates a period of loneliness. Instead, she feels liberated. But things take a menacing turn during a coastal escape as a series of encounters force her to face memories of difficult and unconventional choices that shaped her as a woman and a mother. A seemingly serene tale of a woman’s pleasant rediscovery of herself soon becomes a ferocious exploration of womanhood and motherhood, and the conflicting emotions that tie us to our children. The Lost Daughter became an Oscar-nominated film, released in 2021, which was directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and starred Olivia Colman as Leda.
When The Lying Life of Adults was published in 2019, people queued from midnight for a copy, while reading vigils were also held across Italy. Growing up in a middle-class family of intellectuals, Giovanna realises she’s been lied to by her family about their social standing. Set in a divided Naples, The Lying Life of Adults is a powerful portrait of Giovanna’s transition from childhood to adolescence in the Nineties, and explores the search for identity, damaged familial bonds, and the quest for a life one can claim as their own. Ferrante ‘captures the interior states of young people,’ wrote Dayna Tortorici in the New York Times Book Review, ‘with an unflinching psychological honesty that is striking in its vividness and depth.’
The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein
If you want to get inside Ferrante’s enigmatic mind
Ferrante has also released a collection of her essays, published in English as In The Margins in 2021, which offers insight into her formation as a writer and life as a reader. Ferrante warns us of the perils of ‘bad language’ – historically alien to the truth of women – and advocates for a collective fusion of female talent as she brilliantly discourses on the work of her most beloved authors, including Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Ingeborg Bachmann, among others. The New York Times called it ‘a philosophical monograph on the nature of writing,’ providing insight into what Ferrante has learned over the years.
Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey is a compilation of letters, essays, reflections, and interviews, collected over 20 years, in which Ferrante addresses her choice to stand aside and let her books live autonomous lives. Published in English in 2003, the book reveals the joys and struggles of writing, as Ferrante contemplates her relationship with the cities in which she has lived, along with her views on motherhood, feminism, and her own childhood. Public Books claimed ‘Frantumaglia might well be her most fascinating text’, adding ‘it is both fiction incarnate and a work of self-exegesis’.
In Incidental Inventions, Ferrante’s Guardian columns, written in 2019, are bound together by Andrea Ucini’s witty and beautiful illustrations. In writing her columns across a single year, Ferrante provides insights into a range of topics, including climate change, female friendship and the treatment of women’s literature, providing a rare glimpse inside the mind of a fiercely private author.
Incidental Inventions by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein
If you want to introduce her to the next generation
The Beach at Night is a short, moving, and mysterious children’s book for future and present readers of Ferrante’s beloved novels. Described as a dark fairy tale for young children, the book follows the journey of a doll called Celina who has been left behind at the beach and must fend for herself. Published in 2007, it’s a book The Sydney Morning Herald called an ‘unnerving gem’ as it deals with abandonment and the relationship between mothers and daughters, all through the lens of a poignant children’s story.
The Beach at Night by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein
