Top 10 November titles

• posted Nov 17, 2015 at 12:00 PM

Sarah Treem on ‘The Affair’ and Why She Loves the Character You Hate

Nov. 18, 2015

Once mostly anonymous, the producers who oversee top television series have sometimes become as well known as the actors who star in them. On occasion, The Times will pose questions from readers (and pose some of our own) to notable show runners, and post their responses.

This week, Sarah Treem of Showtime’s “The Affair” discusses the show’s expansion from two to four points of view, Noah’s likability and his and Alison’s occasionally disturbing sex scenes.

Q. Did you know from the beginning that you would tell the story in a nonlinear form? If not, at what point did you make that choice? What specific stories (books, movies, TV shows) that used nonlinear storytelling have impacted or interested you in some way? — Yolanda, Mexico

A. Yes, I did know from the beginning that we were going to tell the story in a nonlinear form. In terms of storytelling that was influential, I mean obviously “Rashomon,” the movie, was influential. There are other books and movies that were highly influential but don’t necessarily employ a nonlinear storytelling device.

I’ve been particularly influenced this year by the Elena Ferrante novels, the Neapolitan cycle. What I think is really fascinating about those novels is you’re highly aware as you’re reading them that you’re seeing the stories through the P.O.V. of Lenu, and that Lila has her own story that you’re kind of privy to, but also not. You become aware as you go further in the novels that Lenu’s perspective is deeply biased and heavily influenced by her insecurities. That’s always been the idea behind this kind of storytelling. That it’s not objective, and we don’t remember our lives as linear narratives. We remember pieces. We remember images.

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante

November 14, 2015

Reviewed by Ruth Latta

In a plain, robust, conversational style, the author known as “Elena Ferrante” has captivated readers worldwide with her chronicle of a complicated friendship between two women. The four novels making up the “Neapolitan” quartet follow the entwined lives of Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo Carracci, from elementary school in the 1950s to Lila’s disappearance at age sixty. The Story of the Lost Child, the fourth and final volume, presents Elena and Lila in mid-life, both back in their crime-ridden impoverished neighbourhood. Their friendship, never harmonious, continues to go up and down until a tragedy and a sad aftermath change things.

The sudden tragic event is foreshadowed by an incident early in the first novel, My Brilliant Friend. Elena and Lila are playing with their dolls in the courtyard near a grate over the cellar window of the home of Don Achille Carracci, a loan shark and black marketeer. Lila pushes Elena’s doll through the grate into the dark depths of the basement. Elena retaliates, then feels dismay at the dolls’ fate. Lila, the braver of the two, convinces Elena that they should knock on the Don’s door and ask for the dolls back, and with much trepidation, they do so. The Don can’t find the dolls but gives them money to buy new ones. Instead, they buy Little Women, hoping to become authors like Louisa May Alcott and make a lot of money.

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Our Top 10 Favorite Books of 2015

The Story of the Lost Child

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/book/The-Story-of-the-Lost-Child_1#ixzz3rBDc7Kxg

Ferrante’s Fourth Dazzles

By CHARLOTTE L.R. ANRIG, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER September 22, 2015

Nearly nothing is known about Italian author Elena Ferrante, except that she is Italian, female, and intensely talented. Despite having released nine novels to wide acclaim, she has refused to disclose her true identity or even reveal her face to the public, choosing instead to exist only as a thunderous literary voice. Her latest work, “The Story of the Lost Child,” displays this voice in brilliant form. The book takes the relationship between the narrator, Elena, and her friend, Lila, as its focal point—a relationship in which love, desire, affection, fear, jealousy, and anger all crash together like opposing weather systems—and then expands outwards into a harrowing storm of intellectual surprise and emotional honesty. Ferrante’s narrative style involves an equal amount of electric force, and the language she uses is just as compelling as the novel’s innovative content.

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Best Books of 2015

The Story of the Lost Child

Elena Ferrante, trans. from the Italian by Ann Goldstein(Europa)

For the second straight year, we’re including an installment of Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels in our top 10. The series wraps up with The Story of the Lost Child, which finds protagonist Elena using biographical details from her fiery friend Lila’s life in her own work. A much-anticipated entry and well worth the wait.

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My Brilliant Friend: PW Talks with Elena Ferrante

Elena Ferrante Names the Devil and Slays the Minotaur

By REBECCA J. NOVELLI posted at 6:00 am on October 30, 2015

How to explain that feeling of astonishment and relief that Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet engenders for so many readers, especially her recent Story of the Lost Child, the fourth and concluding volume? It’s easier perhaps to talk about the tumultuous lives of Elena and Lila, their determination to do the very things that will destroy them, the complex and contradictory plots of female friendships. Easier perhaps to ponder Ferrante’s reclusiveness and speculate on her identity rather than what she reveals about our own. Easier to talk about female friendship rather than face the dark underbelly of all human relationships. In the end, easier to find some way — perhaps any way — to avoid the wounds Ferrante opens and probes for 1,500 pages. What is Ferrante dissecting and how does she keep us attending breathlessly in her operating room?

The Neapolitan quartet is, among other things, a novel of expectations and friendship, not only Elena and Lila’s, but by extension those of women from less-than-affluent circumstances during a period of great social change in the later 20th century. What is possible for them and the men in their lives? Against those possibilities and with the framework of European feminist thinking, Ferrante explores their passionate desires and social limitations. I’ll venture that her encompassing vision of human experience, the aliveness of her characters, and her unique voice rank with those ofWilliam Faulkner, Marcel Proust, and Charles Dickens.

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‘Ferrante Fever’ Exists for a Reason

With the release of the final installation of her Neapolitan tetralogy, The Story of a Lost Child, how and why has Elena Ferrante taken the literary scene by storm?

At a recent book launch for the latest and final book in the ever-reclusive Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan tetralogy, The Story of a Lost Child, the moderator asked the panelists—which included Ann Goldstein, Ferrante’s translator, and Michael Reynolds, her editor—to respond to a word, by association. “Sausage factory,” she prompted, and the audience—at least 80 people crammed into the back of an independent bookstore—shook with laughter.

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The 15 Top New Books to Read for Fall 2015

The Story of the Lost Child, by Elena Ferrante

This is the last book in the “Neapolitan novels” quartet by Ferrante, an Italian author. In it we continue to follow Elena and Lila, two best friends who grew up in Naples following World War II. The first three books are: My Brilliant Friend (1); The Story of a New Name (2); Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (3). The quartet spans six centuries.

What reviewers are saying:

“[Elena and Lila are] one of those unforgettable pairs who define each other and take their place in our collective imagination as a matched set — like Prince Hal and Falstaff, Settembrini and Naphta, Vladimir and Estragon, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Thelma and Louise.” —The New York Times

From My Shelf

Elena Ferrante Pens New Introduction for Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’