From provocative novels, giants real and imagined, and new novels from past masters … authors and critics select their favourite reads of 2015
Frank Cottrell Boyce
The Givenness of Things by Marilynne Robinson; My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante; Debt by David Graeber
The most engrossing book I read this year was The Givenness of Things (Virago), Marilynne Robinson’s celebration of the irreducible complexity of human beings. I was addicted to Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend (Europa Editions). The wonder of great writing is that it uncovers our common humanity. So this northern middle-aged male found himself identifying with two teenage Neapolitan girls. I’m hoping that someone will give me the sequels for Christmas. Everyone needs to read David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years (Melville House) because it’s all true.
Elizabeth Day
The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante; Hot Feminist by Polly Vernon; Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn
So many of my female friends were raving about Elena Ferrante’s The Story of the Lost Child (Europa Editions) that I read all four of her Neapolitan novels in a month. I was swallowed up whole by Ferrante’s writing: the intensity of it, the unapologetic focus on every rendered nuance of a lifelong female friendship. I’ve never read anything quite like it. It is so, so good on women: the ones trapped by men and violence and the ones who break free, with all the associated costs. Hot Feminist by Polly Vernon (Hodder & Stoughton) is bold, brilliant, sharp and funny, tackling big issues (rape, abortion, equal pay) in fizzing prose. Part memoir, part polemic, it urges women to be less judgmental – of each other and of themselves. It’s an idea that shouldn’t be revolutionary but is. I loved Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn (Vintage). Ostensibly a murder mystery set in 1930s London, it is also a multiple character study of wonderful depth and wit. I cannot wait for the sequel, Freya, out in March 2016. The book I’d most like to be given for Christmas is David Lodge’s memoir, Quite a Good Time to Be Born (Harvill Secker). I’m a big fan of Lodge’s work and think he’s criminally underrated as a writer. And it’s an exceptionally good title for a memoir. Or quite a good one at least.
Compelling fiction, a game-changing biography and a 900-page whopper for food nerds – writers reveal which of the past year’s books they have most enjoyed
**Paula Hawkins **
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff; A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson; The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
In Fates and Furies (William Heinemann), Lauren Groff gives us a “he said”, “she said” account of a successful marriage between two people who spend a lifetime loving each other without knowing each other. Rich, lyrical and rewarding. A God in Ruins (Doubleday) is, for me, the best of Kate Atkinson’s brilliant novels; a characteristically perceptive, poignant and complex tale of one man’s attempt to live a “good, quiet life” in the 20th century. I’m very late to the Elena Ferrante party and have yet to read the Neapolitan novels, but I found The Days of Abandonment (Europa) quite extraordinary – a deeply discomforting, visceral tale of a woman unravelling.
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.
The “Neapolitan novels” are a series of four books written by Italian author Elena Ferrante. They trace the fierce, decades-long friendship between Lila and Elena, two working class girls from Naples. The English translations began rolling out three years ago. Since then, Ferrante has developed somewhat of a cult following that unexpectedly pushed her books onto the bestseller list. Critics have called her “the best contemporary novelist you’ve never heard of.” And, in fact, nobody knows her true identity, as she publishes under a pseudonym. For our November Readers’ Review, a discussion of the first of Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels: “My Brilliant Friend.”
Guests
Maureen Corrigan book critic,NPR’s Fresh Air; author, “So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures”
Louis Bayard author, “Roosevelt’s Beast.” His other books include “The Pale Blue Eye,” “The School of Night” and “Mr. Timothy,” a New York Times Notable Book. He teaches fiction writing at The George Washington University.
Laura Benedetti professor of contemporary Italian culture, Georgetown University; author of “The Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in Twentieth-Century Italy” and of the novel “Un Paese Di Carta”
The Waterstones boss reserves a special mention for Elena Ferrante, the pseudonym of an Italian author who has written four books about female friends growing in Naples.
“Utterly brilliant,” Daunt says. “One of those books that if you read Catherine Cookson you love it and if you read the most literary of books, you love it. There are very few books that have that compelling narrative drive that somebody who just wants a page turner on the beach can read and is satisfying intellectually. That in translation came out six, seven, eight years ago now and has been one of those word of mouth things. It has finally hit the tipping point where it goes and becomes a huge bestseller.”
‘No form could ever contain Lila,’ the narrator writes of her brilliant friend. Nor can a novel.
By ELIZABETH LOWRY
How should we classify Elena Ferrante’s magnificently complicated Neapolitan quartet? The three previous titles in the series—“My Brilliant Friend” (2012), “The Story of a New Name” (2013) and “Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay” (2014)—defy categorization.
Books are always an excellent Christmas gift, whether you’re buying for an imaginative child or a bookworm uncle.
My Brilliant Friend (RRP £11.99 , published by Europa Editions)
For the novel of the year, we choose My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante and its three sequels which make up the Neapolitan quartet. Ferrante-fever has been sweeping the country and our customers are hooked. Mystery surrounds the author – it is said that only her publisher knows her true identity. The books follow the friendship of two girls growing up in a poor neighbourhood of Naples. Addictive reading.
For the novel of the year, we choose My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante and its three sequels which make up the Neapolitan quartet. Ferrante-fever has been sweeping the country and our customers are hooked. Mystery surrounds the author – it is said that only her publisher knows her true identity. The books follow the friendship of two girls growing up in a poor neighbourhood of Naples. Addictive reading.
I have only recently finished Elena Ferrante’s second novel “The Story of a New Name” on the heels of having read her first “My Brilliant Friend” but I feel compelled to shout their names out loud to anyone who will listen….. to go, go pick up the first book, then the second. Today I will be go and get the third “Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay”.
The books span the lifelong friendship of Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo two bright young girls who grow up in a crime ridden impoverished neighbourhood of Naples during the 50s. While poverty, brutality and survival are the building blocks of their daily existence, their natural intelligence, curiosity and deep desire to learn becomes the push and pull, the love and hate that underlines their friendship. While Elena is taken under the wing of a Maestra at school and continues to excel, Lila who has the brasher personality of the two, is forced to quit and go to work by the time she is 12 and is married by 16. Yet, as the novels progress, the question remains, who is “The Brilliant Friend’? What is brilliance? What is friendship? What are these irrepressible bonds that fundamentally alter the course of our lives, even our souls?
I gobbled My Brilliant Friend down in a very short amount of time in order to finish it for a book club discussion only for the discussion to be moved, leading me to wish I had spent a bit more time digesting this book as I read.
Since I’ve been spending most of my reading time diving into an ebook version of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, I decided to download an audiobook version of My Brilliant Friend. Unfortunately, a digital audiobook download was unavailable from my library during my time crunch to complete the book, so I signed up for Downpour. Downpour is an audiobook subscription service that allows you to download one audiobook title per month for $12.99. After you purchase the title, it’s yours and won’t disappear from your library after you cancel your subscription like another popular audiobook service *cough*. I really, really liked the service and am looking forward to continuing to get a new audiobook download each month.
Unfortunately, I don’t think an audiobook version of My Brilliant Friend really did the story justice. I frequently found myself zoning out while listening to this book and felt very detached from the story. If you’re going to read this book, definitely opt for a print or ebook version. This book is the debut in the Neapolitan Novels series by the mysterious Elena Ferrante.Ferrante is the pen name of a mysterious Italian author who only communicates with her publisher and the press through letters because she believes that truly great writing doesn’t need promotion of a likable author. The aura of the mysterious author definitely contributes to the allure of the book as I was left wondering how autobiographical the tale was, which I may never learn the answer to.
At this point, I think I’ve been to every NYC-based Elena Ferrante event and while all of them were amazing, last night’s was my favorite by far. I mean, come on: JHUMPA freaking LAHIRI and translator Ann Goldstein chatting it up about Ferrante’s writing? The only way it could’ve been better was if Elena Ferrante walked onstage and revealed her true identity. As I learned last night, that scenario is unlikely to ever happen.
I took a whole bunch of notes! Here we go:
During every Ferrante discussion, Ann Goldstein shuts down the idea that Lila was unsuccessful compared to Lenu. I love it! I never understand when people claim Lenu is the more successful friend – Lila took over every place she worked, then started a hugely successful computer business. Yaaas, Ann Goldstein, shut that shit down.
The most successful contemporary novels about The American Dream are coming from Italy.
Alissa Quart
This fall, Elena Ferrante’s beloved Neapolitan series of novels came to a close. Starting with My Brilliant Friend and ending with The Story of the Lost Child, the series’s two central characters, best friends Elena and Lila, ascend from the impoverished bottom of Italian society to, if not the top, then the comfortable middle class. While most critics and commentators have focused on the series’s portrayal of the women’s tortured but enduring friendship, I find that the books captivate American readers — myself included — for another reason: the main character’s sensational social ascent.
My friend Emily is getting married soon, so last weekend I went over to her house and skulked in the bushes outside until her sister – beadily watching from an upstairs window – opened the door and summoned me in a stage whisper. We tiptoed into the living room, which was decked in balloons, L-plates, flowers and a shocking-pink banner reading ‘Caution: Hen Party’. Stifling giggles, three of Emily’s other friends were crouching behind the sofas, like lions ready to pounce. Emily, blissfully ignorant, was upstairs; she’d been warned not to go into the living room until she was called. She thought her parents were in there, hosting a meeting for locals who opposed the opening of a strip club on Surbiton high street.
“Ferrante understands that sex can be revenge and catharsis even when the person your fury is dictated at has no knowledge of your actions and intentions.”
Sitting on public transport is an occasionally exasperating experience if you have the temerity to attempt travelling while female. Sitting on the London Underground carrying a copy of Chris Kraus’s re-released experimental novel I Love Dick is an experiment in itself.
Those who notice the cover – with bold, unabashed white and pink text on a green background – cast either a scandalised glance, or worse, a leery, suggestive one. Women everywhere can expect to share in those glances now the cult American text is being published in the UK for the first time.
It’s hard to explain exactly what I Love Dick is: autofiction; an epistolary novel; fantasy; or, according to early critics, a gossipy invasion of a feted art critic’s privacy. But how it is categorised is less important than the reaction to the book.
Friends speak of Kraus’s work in the same breathless and conspiratorial way they discuss Elena Ferrante’s novels of female friendship set in Naples. The clandestine clubbishness that envelopes women who’ve read and immersed themselves in the texts shows how little female desire, anger and vulnerability is accurately and confidently explored in literature and culture. Finding other readers leads to a torrent of questions: which character are you? Did the final page destroy you? What happened with the shoes?
Your silly female brain is the reason why you’re getting paid less
In the re-published work, Kraus’s heroine, also called Chris Kraus, recounts her infatuation and pursuit of the eponymous Dick. By piecing together unsent letters, faxes, telephone calls and reconstructed conversation, she describes how the infatuation alters her thoughts, euthanises her marriage and infects her whole mind. As a study in female abjection, it’s instructive, but the book reveals far deeper truths than standard and uncomplicated love plots tend to.
Letters and faxes are drafted and redrafted. The love story plays out predominantly in the mind of the heroine, and the story is far more about the capacity of imagination in the mind of someone infatuated than it is about an overwhelmingly absent man. In the space between the early seeds of attraction and its consummation, the mind runs riot: stories aren’t as simple as many would have us believe – seduction is as much about what happens inside your skull as what happens below your belt.
Kraus, like Ferrante, knows that love and lust are as much about subjugation and submitting yourself to the strictures and problems of the heterosexual couple form, without being able to escape it. For all women are depicted as obsessed with the idea of commitment, marriage and children, Kraus tells an unspoken truth: the gap between desire and consummation is filled with as much, if not more, disaster planning and fear, purely for protection’s sake.
People never know what to do with women who write, especially about lust, in a way that isn’t sanitised and held back. Kraus’s dreams are explicit, but show the seismic damage small and deliberate cruelties can inflict in intimate relationships. Ferrante understands that sex can be revenge and catharsis even when the person your fury is dictated at has no knowledge of your actions and intentions.
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Students marched today because Cameron has condemned a generation
So what do we do with outspoken women, who admit lust is complex, unwieldy and an integral part of female psychic and physical life? Dismiss them and dumb them down, compare them to other male authors or deny they are women at all, as critics have done to Ferrante.
Ferrante, in a recent Vanity Fair interview said: “Often that which we are unable to tell ourselves coincides with that which we do not want to tell, and if a book offers us a portrait of those things, we feel annoyed, or resentful, because… reading about them disturbs us.”
The same sense of being disturbed afflicts critics of Kraus’s book – many of whom refuse to read it at all, denying it is art and dismissing it as gossip.
Both writers instead have produced cult classics, that initially baffled critics while completely beguiling women readers. The recognition of the unspoken way in which your endorphins, mind and capacity for mischief combine in the early stages of relationships, and the sheer exhaustion of infatuation aren’t explored often in a world which still considers women predominantly passive.
Women can be as destructive, possessive and prone to rage as men, it turns out: but discovering that is what terrifies them, while exhilarating women.
2. My Brilliant Friend. Elena Ferrante. (Europa Editions)
3. A Brief History of Seven Killings. Marlon James. (Riverhead)
4. The Story of the Lost Child. Elena Ferrante. (Europa Editions)
5. Mrs. Roosevelt’s Confidante. Susan Elia MacNeal. (Bantam)
6. A Man Called Ove. Fredrik Backman. (Washington Square Press)
7. Lila. Marilynne Robinson. (Picador USA)
8. The Best American Short Stories 2015. T.C. Boyle, Heidi Pitlor (Eds.). (Mariner)
9. The First Bad Man. Miranda July. (Scribner)
10. The Story of a New Name. Elena Ferrante. (Europa Editions)
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