Story of a New Name (Ferrante)

Book Reviews
Every so often you encounter an author so unusual it takes a while to make sense of her voice. The challenge is greater still when this writer's freshness has nothing to do with fashion, when it's imbued with the most haunting music of all, the echoes of literary history. Elena Ferrante is this rare bird: so deliberate in building up her story that you almost give up on it, so gifted that by the end she has you in tears.... As a translator, Ann Goldstein does Ferrante a great service. Like the original Italian, the English here is disciplined, precise, never calling attention to itself.... Ferrante's gift for recreating real life stems as much from the quiet, unhurried rhythm of her writing as from the people and events she describes. The translation reproduces Ferrante's narrative ebb and flow while registering the distinct features of her voice.
Joseph Luzzi - New York Times Book Review


The through-line in all of Ferrante’s investigations, for me, is nothing less than one long, mind-and-heart-shredding howl for the history of women (not only Neapolitan women), and its implicit j’accuse.... Ferrante’s effect, critics agree, is inarguable. (From a 2013  review of The Story of a New Name.)
Joan Fran - San Francisco Chronicle


Elena Greco and her "brilliant friend" Lina Cerullo...enter the tumultuous world of young womanhood with all its accompanying love, loss, and confusion.... Ferrante masterfully combines Elena's recollections of events with Lila's point of view.... [P]oignant.
Publishers Weekly


[A] beautifully written portrait of a sometimes difficult friendship....[and] a study in the possibility of triumph over disappointment.... [T]his second book closes with [Elana] embarking on what promises to be a brilliant literary career and with the hint that true love may not be far behind. Admirers of Ferrante's work will eagerly await the third volume.
Kirkus Reviews