Forty-five-year-old Delia returns to her childhood home of Naples, Italy, to discover the truth behind the drowning death of her mother, Amalia. Suspicious circumstances surround Amalia's last days; the humble seamstress, who never flaunted her beauty for fear of her jealous husband's wrath, was wearing nothing but an expensive designer brassiere at the time of her death. As Delia wanders the vibrant streets of Naples, she ponders three dubious men who figured prominently in her mother's past: Amalia's irascible brother, known for hurling insults at acquaintances and strangers alike; her husband, a mediocre painter with no qualms about slapping Amalia in public; and his lascivious agent, whose marriage never precluded him from propositioning other women. Ironically, it is her mother's death that enables Delia to make better sense of her own life. "I realized . . . that in fact I had Amalia under my skin, like a hot liquid that had been injected into me at some unknown time." Pseudonymous Italian novelist Ferrante (The Days of Abandonment, 2005) delivers a brutally frank tale about the dangerous intersection of rage and desire. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
Praise for Troubling Love
"Troubling Love is a psychological mystery...Ferrante is fascinated by the moments when a personality—like a wire stretched too far from its power source—shorts and corrodes."
—David Lipsky, The New York Times
"A tour de force, Troubling Love is a harrowing tour of a feminine psyche under siege. Together with The Days of Abandonment, it confirms Ferrante's reputation as one of Italy's best contemporary novelists."
—Seattle Times
"With quick-paced mystery guiding the story, Delia explores her relationship with her mother, unraveling memories and secrets repressed since childhood and coming to terms with an upbringing filled with jealousy and violence...Troubling Love is vivid and powerful."
—Library Journal
"Ferrante's polished language belies the rawness of her imagery."
—The New Yorker
"Ferrante delivers a brutally frank tale about the dangerous intersection of rage and desire."
—Booklist
Praise for Elena Ferrante
“Elena Ferrante’s decision to remain biographically unavailable is her greatest gift to readers, and maybe her boldest creative gesture.”
—David Kurnick, Public Books
“Everyone should read anything with Ferrante’s name on it.”
—Eugenia Williamson, The Boston Globe
“Ferrante has written about female identity with a heft and sharpness unmatched by anyone since Doris Lessing.”
—Elizabeth Lowry, The Wall Street Journal
“Ferrante has become Italy’s best known writer. In our era of social media accessibility, shameless self-promotion, and hot young celebrity culture, this is nothing short of astounding.”
—Gina Frangello, Electric Literature
“Ferrante’s writing seems to say something that hasn’t been said before—it isn’t easy to specify what this is—in a way so compelling its readers forget where they are, abandon friends and disdain sleep.”
—Joanna Biggs, The London Review of Books
“To disagree over the quality of a Ferrante passage is often to run up against what you cannot answer or digest.”
—Jedediah Purdy, The Los Angeles Review of Books
“Who, in American literature today, deals with the subtleties of class difference in such a painful and sensitive way, while achieving even a fraction of Ferrante’s massive popularity? . . . We must go to the fictionalized Naples of Ferrante to read the story we want to believe can happen again in our country.”
—Alissa Quart, BuzzFeed
About the Author
Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), which was made into a film directed by Roberto Faenza, Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), adapted by Mario Martone, and The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008), soon to be a film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal. 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.
