Frantumaglia, Elena Ferrante
Frantumaglia, Elena Ferrante
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Frantumaglia
A Writer’s Journey

Author: Elena Ferrante, Ann Goldstein

Narrator: Hillary Huber

Unabridged: 13 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/01/2016

Synopsis

The writer known as Elena Ferrante has taken pains to hide her identity in the hope that readers would focus on her body of work. But in this volume, she invites us into her workshop and offers a glimpse into the drawers of her writing desk—those drawers from which emerged her three early standalone novels and the four installments of the Neapolitan Novels, the New York Times bestselling “enduring masterpiece” (The Atlantic).Consisting of over twenty years of letters, essays, reflections, and interviews, Frantumaglia is a unique depiction of an author who embodies a consummate passion for writing. Ferrante answers many of her readers’ questions. She addresses her choice to stand aside and let her books live autonomous lives. She discusses her thoughts and concerns as her novels are being adapted into films. She talks about the challenge of finding concise answers to interview questions. She explains the joys and the struggles of writing, the anguish of composing a story only to discover that that story isn’t good enough. She contemplates her relationship with psychoanalysis, with the cities she has lived in, with motherhood, with feminism, and with her childhood as a storehouse for memories, impressions, and fantasies. The result is a vibrant and intimate self-portrait of a writer at work.

About Elena Ferrante

Elena Ferrante, author of The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, and My Brilliant Friend, among others, is one of Italy’s most important and acclaimed contemporary writers. She was named one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2016 by Time.

About Hillary Huber

Hillary Huber is a multiple Audie Award finalist, an Earphones Award winner, and an AudioFile Best Voice. She has recorded over three hundred titles spanning many genres and holds a bachelor's degree in English literature. A voracious reader and listener, she was raised in Connecticut and Hawaii but now splits her time between California and New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by William2

Great stuff here for those interested in the writing process, on how it is sieved from memory’s ambiguous fragments. To read of the many levels on which Ferrante proceeds as a novelist is—for the deep reader or writer—riveting. The autobiography in Chapter 1.16, which describes the childhood she plu......more

Goodreads review by Lucy

If you read all of her books and still want more, this is full of insight, wisdom, and context. It's interesting to watch her approach to participating in journalism change over the years.......more

Quotes

“For admirers of Ferrante’s work who are not particularly interested in a biographical reading of her fiction, Frantumaglia offers something else: a chance to consider her strange, spectral presence in the world of letters.” New York Times Book Review

“In Frantumaglia there are some outstanding passages of literary criticism, feminist theory, film studies, sociology, and philosophy.” Sunday Times (London)

“Elena Ferrante…has created a body of work that stands alone. This represents an entire world, made up of language, family, gesture, emotions, politics, and culture.” Washington Post

“This is a fascinating volume, as ever beautifully translated by Ann Goldstein. At times, it is as absorbing as Ferrante’s extraordinary fictions and touches on troubling unconscious matter with the same visceral intensity.” Guardian (London)

“American readers hungry for every Ferrante sentence they can get will find many here in which she lowers her knife through the bread of life.” Los Angeles Times

“A massive prank on criticism and the media: all of it done to show us how badly we read what we read, how badly women writers are treated, and how badly the press operates.” New Republic

“Ferrante’s work is not about women or friendship or abandonment: It is, rather, about a sense of the deep-down rawness of life itself—which runs like an electrical current beneath the prose.” Nation

“A feast for writers, lovers of literature, and creators of all kinds.” Booklist

“Devotees will surely pore over the bits and pieces in an effort to arrive one step closer at understanding the phenomenon that is Ferrante fever.” Kirkus Reviews

Awards

  • Refinery29 Pick
  • World Literature Today Pick
  • Guardian Best Book of the Year
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