Best of the Best-of Lists

A compilation of books cited on multiple year-end lists

Best Fiction

The Journal reviewed best-of lists from 12 sources to discover the most-cited books of 2015. Among the year’s best novels, Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies came out on top with seven mentions.

The Story of the Lost Child – 5 mentions

By Elena Ferrante; translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein

“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. Are they genre or literary fiction? Soap operas? Political epics? Some form of memoir? With the arrival of Ann Goldstein’s supple English translation of the fourth and final volume, “The Story of the Lost Child,” the question of form, in all its guises, becomes even more involving…” — Elizabeth Lowry

Best books of 2015

As the year draws to a close, we look back at the year’s reviews and the books that really stayed with us. Here are 10 of our favorites — first, five nonfiction titles, followed by five fiction. Any of them would make a great holiday present — or a gift to yourself.

THE STORY OF THE LOST CHILD, by Elena Ferrante

(Credit: Europa Editions)

Not every literary novelist takes Twitter by storm with her own hashtag. But this was the year of #FerranteFever, when the pseudonymous Italian author — whose real identity is unknown even to her American translator — published the final volume of her Neapolitan series, which has been steadily winning over readers since the release of “My Brilliant Friend” in 2012. At the center of the books are two women, Elena and Lila, who grew up together in a poor, violent neighborhood of Naples in the 1950s; as the years and the volumes go by their lives diverge, but their complicated friendship remains the focus, passing through every imaginable phase of passionate identification, resentment, disconnection, disdain and love. Read a review. (Europa Editions, $18)

A year of reading wonderfully: What writers recommend for the holidays

THE STORY OF THE LOST CHILD is on the Sydney Morning Herald’s list of writers’ recommended holiday reading. Four writers––Fiona Wright, Joan London, Jessie Cole, and James Bradley––mention Ferrante.

Read full article

The 2016 Tournament of Books Long List

Continue reading →

What critics agree are the best books of 2015

2015 has been an unusual—and exciting—year for books. We saw new works from literary legends, like Dr. Seuss and Harper Lee, books from rising contemporary figures such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, and tomes from established writers such as Salman Rushdie and Jonathan Franzen.

A large number of “Best Books of 2015” lists have now been published—with some comprehensive selections for works in the English language from the New York Times, the Guardian, the Seattle Times, the Boston Globe and more. Quartz sorted through them to find the most acclaimed of the best—the books that had appeared most frequently on critics’ lists.

Here’s how they ranked by the number of lists that they were included on:

Overall, there wasn’t much overlap between most lists we analyzed. It wasn’t surprising to see Ta-Nehisi Coates’ second book at the top of this meta-review. Between the World and Me garnered widespread praise since it came out, and capped off 2015 with the National Book Award. Coates’ book was written as a letter to his son, and takes a look at the history of African-Americans in the United States. (Coates is a national correspondent at Quartz’s sister publication The Atlantic.)

Franzen’s new book, Purity, made the list as well. Overall, the book got mixed reviews, but critics were fans. Franzen’s fifth novel focuses on a college student who gets tangled up with a Julian Assange-esque character.

Another notable inclusion was The Story of the Lost Child, written by pseudonymous Elena Ferrante. It’s the final book of a series that started in 2011. The saga explores the lives of two intelligent girls, Elena and Raffaella, from childhood to adulthood as they deal with a violent family life. The novel has also been recognized for having one of the cheesiest book covers of 2015.

THE ART OF READING: FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2015

By Carole Reedy

December. A time to reflect on the year’s end and anticipate the days ahead. One of my favorite mind games is to review books I’ve read this year and investigate 2016’s fresh arrivals. As Julian Barnes reminds us, the pleasure is in the anticipation.

Here are my top ten picks from the 60 or so books I’ve read this year. Following the list are the preferences of THE EYE staff, who are naturally avid readers. Presented not necessarily in order of preference, though numbers one and two are indeed my favorites of the year…

1–The four books that make up the Neapolitan Series by Elena Ferrante. The author claims this is really just one long novel, divided into four selections: My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child. Ferrante masterfully creates the world of two eight-year-old girls in Naples and follows them through adolescence and adulthood until they reach their 60s. The book received well-deserved accolades from the critics, and the author received a lot of press partly inspired (ironically) by her refusal to participate in publicity for her books, which she says should stand on the merit of the writing, not on clever advertising and promotion. Ferrante is a recluse, in the style of J.D. Salinger, who gives no live interviews or appearances and does not participate in book tours. In fact, Elena Ferrante is not even her given name.

THE BEST BOOKS OF 2015

The story of childhood friends Elena and Lila reaches its conclusion in the finale of Ferrante’s critically acclaimed quartet of Neapolitan novels. Wrote our reviewer Alix Ohlin: “The acclaim is justified and the finale is richly satisfying.”

Continue reading →

The 18 Best Fiction Books Of 2015

Maureen Corrigan’s Best Books Of 2015: Short(ish) Books That Pack A Big Punch

NPR Book Concierge: Guide to 2015’s Great Reads.

For the past few years, Europa Editions has been bringing out Elena Ferrante’s series of literary novels about an edgy, decades-long friendship between two women in Naples. The fourth and final of the “Neapolitan Novels,” titled The Story of the Lost Child, has just been published. It’s spectacular, but you will realize how spectacular it is only if you do not cheat. You must read the three earlier (also superb) Neapolitan Novels, or the perfect devastation wreaked by the conclusion of this last novel will be lost on you.

— recommended by Maureen Corrigan, book critic, Fresh Air

Best of 2015: Best Fiction Books

1.The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante (Europa Editions)

“Ferrante’s accomplishment in these novels is to extract an enduring masterpiece from dissolving margins, from the commingling of self and other, creator and created, new and old, real and whatever the opposite of real may be. […] Ferrante’s voice is very much her own, but it’s force is communal. Perhaps her quartet should be seen as one of the first great works of post-authorial literature.” — Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic

Books of the year 2015

Of course the question of the ‘truth’ of the book’s contents is knocked right out of the park by Ferrante, through the simple fact of having deprived the reader of any earthly means of coming by it. I read this on holiday, and as with the others in the Neapolitan quartet, it is the perfect holiday read: an immersion in a life far removed from yours in time and space, but chiming in its tenor, characters and events at every moment with how life is, here, today, lying in this particular sun lounger, with the sun just there, and a cold beer within reach. You do need time and space to read the books, it’s true. Some people have given up part way through the first volume (which isn’t the best one – Lila and Lenu grow as characters as they grow as people) but I’d be very surprised if anyone has finished Vol I, My Brilliant Friend, and not wanted, not felt impelled, to go on with the others. I strongly remember my feeling the previous summer, on finishing Volume III, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, which ends with Lenu taking off in an aeroplane with her new lover, and feeling myself – my reading self – lift along with her: a physical sensation. So yes, there is a wonderful soapy, family saga aspect to these books, and yes there is little in the writing to make you jump for joy, as you might find on every page with Bennett or Porter, but they are politically vital, and pscyhologically nourishing; they are the answer to anyone who moans that caring about characters is the last thing you should admit to when talking about your reading. Also, this volume, more than the others, as it comes to the end of the story, manages to glide into some deeply weird territory, when the whole enterprise seems to fold in on itself. Don’t talk to me about the ending. She came close to spoiling the whole damn thing with the ending. But that doesn’t stop the four books being a triumph. I’ll reread them one day. When I’m older. And I look forward tremendously to what I’ll find in them, that I can’t find now.

(I wrote about a launch event for Story of the Lost Child at Lutyens and Rubinstein on my blog, here)

The Best 15 Books of 2015: 112th St.