Best of 2015

Herald Scotland

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Julie Bertagna, author

Ferrante fervour reached a peak this September when the last book in Elena Ferrante’s addictive Neapolitan saga hit the shelves. Ferrante is a publishing phenomenon; an invisible Italian writer, an enigma who shuns all publicity in an age of compulsory author media platforms and ever-Twittering presences, compared to Tolstoy and Dickens in the grand sweep, ambition and popularity of her work. The Story of the Lost Child (Europa Editions, £11.99) is the fourth and final episode that brings the revelation of the terrible thing, some unknown disaster, that characters Elena and Lila have been moving towards since we meet them as children in Book One (My Brilliant Friend). This is an epic exploration of a lifelong friendship and the complex interior worlds of two women, enmeshed with a rich cast, set against the story of a changing nation. Brilliant, brutal, beautiful, bleak and brave, Ferrante is this winter’s fireside read.

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The New York Times

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100 Notable Books of 2015

The year’s notable fiction, poetry and nonfiction, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.

THE STORY OF THE LOST CHILD. Book 4, The Neapolitan Novels: “Maturity, Old Age.” By Elena Ferrante. Translated by Ann Goldstein. (Europa Editions, paper, $18.) Friends confront age and the questions of life’s meaning in the stunning final book of this brilliant series.

The Independent

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The best translated fiction of 2015

Here are some of 2015’s finest books to fire the imagination, engage the grey matter and invigorate the spirit over the festive period, chosen by our literary critics

Boyd Tonkin

@indyvoices

At the root of literary art lies Socrates’ challenge to his accusers: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Some 2,400 years later, lives examined with a searing creative candour drive two series of mesmeric confessional fictions that have hooked readers everywhere. The Italian spellbinder Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet reached its climax in The Story of the Lost Child(translated by Ann Goldstein; Europa Editions, £11.99). (…)

 

Flavorwire

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The 50 Best Independent Press Books of 2015

This was the year, as Wesley Morris pointed out in the New York Times, of “a great cultural identity migration” — it was a year we wrestled with identity. This fact is everywhere evident in our independent literature — take, for example, John Keene’s exploration of race and historical identity inCounternarratives, the year’s best work of short fiction, independent or otherwise. Or Maggie Nelson’s much celebrated The Argonauts, which wrestles with family, queerness, and gender-fluidity by way of a courageous act of autotheory. It’s worth pointing out, too, that these examples, like many others on this list, rely on hybrid or altogether new forms of writing. Migrating identities, in other words, require migrating forms.

This is why I’ve chosen to include independent nonfiction on this year’s list. It’s also why I haven’t shied away from selecting from a wealth of translated fiction. National identity, or identities that build and dissolve within foreign borders, likewise migrate — sometimes into English. And they shouldn’t be ignored.

Here is your list of the 50 best books from independent presses that I knew of — or managed to remember — from 2015.

 

The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante, trans. Ann Goldstein (Europa)

A fitting conclusion to her landmark series of violent, Neapolitan novels, which may be the great literary cycle of our lifetimes.