Elena Ferrante’s latest book
There is a moment in Elena Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend” when Elena, the narrator and possibly the author’s alter ego, reacts to a letter she has received from Lila, the other main character. “The voice set in the writing overwhelmed me, enthralled me even more than when we talked face to face: it was completely cleansed of the dross of speech, of the confusion of the oral.”
The lucid, well-formed essays that make up “In the Margins” are written in an equally captivating voice, one free of “the dross of speech.” All four were presented last year as lectures by two Italian women, an actress and a scholar, both standing in for the reclusive, anonymous Ferrante. Now the essays have been translated into English by Ann Goldstein. Although this is a slim collection, there is more than enough here to nourish both the common reader and the Ferrante aficionado.
The first piece, “Pain and Pen,” takes the form of a learning curve. Ferrante reveals how as an adolescent and apprentice writer she read only male authors and came to imitate them. Eventual exposure to female writers like Virginia Woolf and poet Gaspara Stampa taught her how to break free of “the male tradition” and turn out writing that is both “compliant” and “impetuous.”
In “Aquamarine,” Ferrante explains that in her earlier years she was gripped by a “mania for realism.” She wanted to “circumscribe, inscribe, describe, prescribe, even proscribe, if necessary” but never could faithfully replicate reality. She expounds on five “fundamental” discoveries gleaned in part from close readings of “essential” books, all of which altered her writing approach and helped her emerge from her creative dead end.
Ferrante’s third essay, “Histories, I,” examines female literary influences and the challenges faced by female authors who are committed to producing “writing of truth.” The last, “Dante’s Rib,” sees her reflecting on the Italian poet and “his boldest creation,” Beatrice.
Every essay here is a blend of deep thought, rigorous analysis and graceful prose. We occasionally get the odd glimpse of the author (“I’ve never had much courage — it’s my cross”) but mainly the focus is on the nuts and bolts of writing and her practice of her craft.
The essays are most rewarding when Ferrante discusses the origins of her books, in particular the celebrated Neapolitan Novels, and the multifaceted heroines that power them. As she says of characters in general: “I feel they are false when they exhibit clear coherence, and I become passionate about them when they say one thing and do the opposite.”
These essays provide valuable insight into how Ferrante developed as a writer and how she works her magic.
“Seeking Fortune Elsewhere: Stories” by Sindya Bhanoo
(Catapult, 240 pp.,$26).
Yearning drives the characters in Sindya Bhanoo’s elegant, sensitive debut collection. The characters long for appreciation, absent loved ones, old customs, the opportunity to exercise power. The stories feature several generations of characters from the Tamil community, living in the U.S. and Tamil Nadu, India, and traveling between.
Two of the most resonant stories depict an India in which tech booms in bustling Bangalore and Chennai have sent housing prices soaring. Developers offer elders incentives to move or let their small homes be turned into apartment buildings in exchange for an updated flat.
In “Malliga Homes” — an O. Henry Prize winner — the narrator, who moved to a retirement community after her husband died, explains, “Like me, nearly every resident of Malliga Homes has lost sons and daughters to Foreign.” As the residents dash home to answer infrequent phone calls from their children, and have few decisions to make except for what to eat for dinner, the reader senses they have little to do but wait to die. In “No. 16 Model House Road,” the protagonist seizes her one chance to exert control after the course of her entire life has been decided for her. She relishes her small rebellion.
Bhanoo focuses her keen attention on these women, no longer at the center of their family’s lives and often overlooked.