Not a good entrance point for readers unfamiliar with the author’s work, but devotees will surely pore over the bits and...
An assemblage of correspondence and interviews provides Ferrante-curious readers with a look into the mind and methods of the reclusive author.
First published in Italy in 2003, subsequent to the publication of the author’s first two stand-alone novels, this new and expanded, English-language edition of Frantumaglia (“fragments”) follows the juggernaut that is the Neapolitan Quartet (2012-2015). Interviews, letters, and other fragments from the years spanning 1991 to 2016 touch on a variety of topics, including Ferrante’s widely reported beliefs about books having “no need of their authors” once published and discussions of authors whose works have inspired or informed her own—e.g., Elsa Morante, Alba de Cespedes, Madame de La Fayette. The ambiguous dance Ferrante engages in with readers and interpreters is revealed in the assertion that she would only marginally involve herself with the screenplay for the film adaptation of her early novel Troubling Love, which ultimately translates into the provision of several pages of detailed commentary on the treatment. The author’s ambivalence about the release of the assembled “fragments” of interviews and writings themselves drove her to agree to their publication only if they were presented as an “appendix” or companion text to her novels. Her primary argument that an author’s only duty to readers is the writing of a book—and not selling it or promoting the author—permeates hundreds of pages of excerpted interviews; only rarely does anything of biographical significance sneak through. One distinctive interview, from the art magazine Frieze, does provide tantalizing details about Ferrante’s preferences in art and music, but mostly she confines herself to reiterations of her isolationist manifesto, explorations of her influences, and articulations of the struggles of female authors.
Not a good entrance point for readers unfamiliar with the author’s work, but 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.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-60945-292-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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