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The New York Times

Inside the List

GREGORY COWLES | 
Throwing Stones: Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels are well represented on the trade paperback list this week — the first in the series,“My Brilliant Friend,” is No. 4, and the second (“The Story of a New Name”) and third (“Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay”) are Nos. 14 and 15 on the extended list. Given the strong feminist politics at issue in those books, it’s unsurprising that Ferrante declares herself, in the new anthology “Poems That Make Grown Women Cry,” to be a fan of Emily Dickinson’s “I Took My Power in My Hand.” That poem begins “I took my Power in my Hand — / and went against the World,” and ends:

I aimed my Pebble — but Myself
Was all the one that fell —
Was it Goliath — was too large —
Or was myself — too small?

“At times I’ve read these lines as a reflection on women’s writing, at times as a symbol of any female venture,” Ferrante notes. “I wish all Emilys not to be small by nature, I wish they would just try, and try again, and so become large.”