In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing
A NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER
A BEST BOOK OF 2022 (Air Mail)
Four new and revelatory essays by the author of My Brilliant Friend and The Lost Daughter.
In 2020, Claire Luchette in O, The Oprah Magazine described the beloved Italian novelist Elena Ferrante as "an oracle among authors." Here, in these four crisp essays, Ferrante offers a rare look at the origins of her literary powers. She writes about her influences, her struggles, and her formation as both a reader and a writer; she describes the perils of "bad language" and suggests ways in which it has long excluded women's truth; she proposes a choral fusion of feminine talent as she brilliantly discourses on the work of Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Ingeborg Bachmann, and many others.
Here is a subtle yet candid book by "one of the great novelists of our time" about adventures in literature, both in and out of the margins.
"Everyone should read everything with Elena Ferrante's name on it."--The Boston Globe
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Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), and The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008), now a film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and starring Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, and Paul Mescal. She is also the author of Incidental Inventions (Europa, 2019), illustrated by Andrea Ucini, Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey (Europa, 2016) and a children's picture book illustrated by Mara Cerri, The Beach at Night (Europa, 2016). The four volumes known as the "Neapolitan quartet" (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child) were published by Europa Editions in English between 2012 and 2015. My Brilliant Friend, the HBO series directed by Saverio Costanzo, premiered in 2018. Ferrante's most recent novel, the New York Times bestselling The Lying Life of Adults, was published in 2020 by Europa Editions.
Ann Goldstein has translated into English all of Elena Ferrante's books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Lying Life of Adults and The Story of the Lost Child, which was also shortlisted for the Booker International Prize. She has been honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship and is the recipient of the PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award. She lives in New York.
Praise for In the Margins
"In these four pitch-perfect essays, the doyenne of Italian literature pores over her toolbox, discovering that reinvention is the name of her game... An essential read for all aspiring writers."--Oprah Daily, A Most Anticipated Book of 2022
"Razor-sharp... A candid look into Ferrante's development of not only her craft, but also her life-long passion for literature."--TIME Magazine, A Most Anticipated Book of 2022
★ "Four essays illuminate the mind of Ferrante in this dazzling collection... The author's legions of fans are in for a treat."--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"The essays of In the Margins are illuminating and beguiling as they peek into the literary craft of a writer at the height of her powers."--ForeWord Reviews
"Ferrante offers insights about her complex protagonists and enticing glimpses into a writer's life."--Kirkus Reviews
"A vivid and concise introduction to effective writing for students and professionals alike... This book is a true treasure and could provide an important guide for other marginalized writers looking for their own voices."--New York Journal of Books
"An intimate self-portrait and an essential read."--A.V. Club, A Most Anticipated Book of 2022
Praise for The Lying Life of Adults
"What a relief it is when an author who has written a masterpiece returns to prove the gift intact."--Dayna Tortorici, The New York Times Book Review
"Suspenseful and propulsive."--Parul Sehgal, The New York Times
"Ms. Ferrante once again, with undiminished skill and audacity, creates an emotional force field that has at its heart a young girl on the brink of womanhood."--Anna Mundow, Wall Street Journal
"Unbearably beautiful."--Sarah Chihaya, Los Angeles Review of Books
"Ferrante has a gift, perhaps even a genius, for making great literature out of melodrama."--Judith Thurman, The New Yorker
"Slinky and scowling as a Neapolitan cat."--Annalisa Quinn, NPR
"One of this year's most memorable heroines."--Bethanne Patrick, The Boston Globe
"Exquisitely moody."--Merve Emre, The Atlantic
"A distillation of adolescence itself."--Lauren Mechling, Vogue
"Ferrante is still Ferrante--her characters have wide-spanned souls and so does Naples, exuding the smells of the sea and gasoline and baking crust."--Hillary Kelly, Los Angeles Times
"Timeless."--Belinda Luscombe, TIME Magazine
"[Ferrante is] a writer whose work transcends genre."--Lewis Beale, The Daily Beast
Praise for Elena Ferrante and The Neapolitan Novels
"Elena Ferrante is one of the great novelists of our time. Her voice is passionate, her view sweeping and her gaze basilisk . . . In these bold, gorgeous, relentless novels, Ferrante traces the deep connections between the political and the domestic. This is a new version of the way we live now--one we need, one told brilliantly, by a woman."--Roxana Robinson, The New York Times Book Review
"Elena Ferrante will blow you away."--Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones
"Ferrante's novels are intensely, violently personal, and because of this they seem to dangle bristling key chains of confession before the unsuspecting reader."--James Wood, The New Yorker
"One of the more nuanced portraits of feminine friendship in recent memory."--Megan O'Grady, Vogue
"My Brilliant Friend took my breath away." --Elizabeth Strout, author of Olive Kitteridge
"One of modern fiction's richest portraits of a friendship."--John Powers, NPR
"Compelling, visceral and immediate . . . a riveting examination of power . . . The Neapolitan novels are a tour de force."--Jennifer Gilmore, The Los Angeles Times
"An unconditional masterpiece."--Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer-prize winning author of Whereabouts
"An engrossing, wildly original contemporary epic about the demonic power of human (and particularly female) creativity checked by the forces of history and society."--The Los Angeles Review of Books
"Ferrante's own writing has no limits, is willing to take every thought forward to its most radical conclusion and backwards to its most radical birthing."---The New Yorker
