In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing by Elena Ferrante
Europa Editions | $20.00 | Hardback | 9781609457372 | 176 pages | March 15, 2022
If you are a fan of Elena Ferrante, this is the book for you. If you’re wondering about the Ferrante hype, this is also the book for you. In the Margins originated as a series of lectures Ferrante gave at the University of Bologna. She discusses her work as a writer, including her technique, her influences and her struggles. Writers will be inspired by these essays. Writing is hard work, it can be frustrating but it’s worth the struggles in the end. Writing has an inherent power to connect, to educate, to comfort. You’ll want to spend time absorbing these essays.
I might be the only reader who hasn’t yet read all of the “Neapolitan novels.” I liked My Brilliant Friend but wasn’t blown away at the time. I do want to circle back to the others. I have become a fan through her other works. I quite liked The Lost Daughter. It’s a dark, honest and thoughtful novel about the challenges of being a mother. In anticipation of this essay collection, I recently read Incidental Inventions, essays Elena Ferrante wrote as a columnist for The Guardian. The topics covered include feminism, friendship, motherhood, writing, insomnia, addictions, nationalism, death and the recent film adaptation of The Lost Daughter—“I’m attached to that book in a particular way. I know that, with it, I ventured into dangerous waters without a life preserver.”
Like many successful writers, Ferrante is an avid reader and she started writing at a young age. She amasses journals filled with her stories and thoughts. Discussing her youth, she said: “I read a lot, but what I liked was almost never written by women. It seemed to me that the voice of men came from the pages and that voice preoccupied me, I tried in every way to imitate it.” She discusses the writing of Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein and Dante, among others.
In her writing, Ferrante doesn’t hesitate to show the underbelly of humanity, the darkness. That makes her writing so strong and appealing. She explains: “Anyone who has literary ambitions knows that the motivations, both great and small, that impel the hand to write come from “real life”: the yearning to describe the pain of love, the pain of living, the anguish of death; the need to straighten the world that is all crooked; the search for a new morality that will reshape us; the urgency to give voice to the humble, to strip away power and its atrocities; the need to prophesy disasters but also to design happy worlds to come from there.” She said: “Beautiful writing becomes beautiful when it loses its harmony and has the desperate power of the ugly. And characters? I feel they are false when they exhibit clear coherence and I become passionate about them and do the opposite.”
Policing the City by Didier Fassin, Frederic Dubomy, Jake Raynal Other Press, March 1, 2022. 112 p.
Academic reports can be dry and difficult to absorb by those who aren’t in academia. Adapted from the essay ‘Enforcing Order,’ this ethnographic presents information in a thoughtful, accessible and creative format. It’s a fascinating exploration of law and order.
What is ethnography? Ethnography is a three-pronged social science practice. First, it involves sharing the everyday lives of those people studied over a long period of time. Second, the ethnographer establishes relationships and gradually makes discoveries, interfering as little as possible in the outcomes. Finally, it’s a writing practice that may take the form of articles , books, films, photographs to communicate their findings.
Anthropologist and sociologist Didier Fassin spent 15 months in the mid-2000s observing an anti-crime squad in one of the largest precincts in the Paris region. The French people face many of the same challenges as those in the United States, particularly racism and police brutality against immigrants and minorities. Fassin wanted to understand the violence in these working-class, largely immigrant suburbs—“But more, perhaps, than the number of deaths, it is the police’s daily harassment of low-income groups and racial minorities and hence the experience of humiliation, discrimination, and violence, that leave the deepest marks in these communities.”
Not only an academic, Fassin had first-hand experience as a resident of this urban community. His son was targeted by the police. In Policing the City, we see everyday routine and rituals and how police departments sustain prejudices and systemic violence against these communities. Fassin found that the police believe that judges can be too lenient and on-street punishment compensates for that. Police officers operate like vigilantes. Eight out of 10 officers were from rural areas or small towns with little experience in urban areas, leading to prejudices and leads to tensions and clashes between the police and residents of housing projects. He also observed that police have been given a lot of power and autonomy. This development led to more anti-crime squads throughout France. There needs to be greater diversity in police recruitment. In the UK, unarmed beat officers become integrated into the community. In the United States, an armed officer patrolling in a car with a limited relationship with the public is the norm. That’s the established model most everywhere worldwide.
I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness byClaire Faye Watkins Riverhead Books, October 2021. 304 pg.
Unique, strange, dark, smart. Just the type of novel I like. The main character is a writer suffering from postpartum depression who questions her writing career, her marriage and being a mother. Honest depictions of ambivalent mothers (see also: The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante) definitely divides readers.. I’m not a mother and never will be. This woman left her newborn to go to a book event. She’s not particularly interested in being married or in a monogamous relationship either. She grew up in this area outside Las Vegas so she’s revisiting past traumatic experiences. Her mother died of a drug overdose and her father was in the Manson Family. There’s a lot going on and Watkins weaves it all together brilliantly.
I Came All This Way to Meet You by Jami Attenberg Ecco, January 2022.
This was everything I want in a memoir: relatable, honest, interesting, complicated, revealing. Jami Attenberg is one of my favorite authors and I appreciated learning more about her writing career and personal life. She’s lived in so many cool places and done lots of traveling; basically she’s done all the things I thought I’d do by my age.
Real Estate by Deborah Levy Bloomsbury, August 2021. 224 pg.
I don’t know how I expected to have any sort of writing success when I’ve become so limited by my anxiety. I’m terribly agoraphobic. I’ve hardly traveled. I don’t have enough experience. I don’t have my own place. I barely have a room of my own to write in. I’m terribly agoraphobic. I’m envious of anyone who manages to have these things because I don’t think I ever will. Of course, that’s what’s supposed to happen as an adult, isn’t it? Booker-nominated writer Deborah Levy didn’t get recognition until she was 50. Real Estate, the third installment of the Living Autobiography series, is my favorite. It’s very journal-like in her recollection of events and chronicling her thoughts. She has a new rented writing shed in someone’s backyard. Levy contemplates place, ownership, independence, writing, aging, feminism. She travels to New York, Mumbai, Greece and Germany. She lives in Paris for a year on a writing fellowship. She references literature and film: May Sarton’s journals, the Bergman film Through a Glass Darkly, Little Women, Simone de Beauvoir, the television show Feud, Audre Lorde, Gloria Steinem, Leonard Cohen.
Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri Knopf, April 2021. 160 pg.
Loved this and found it very relatable. I’m so happy to read novels with main characters over 40! Jhumpa Lahiri is one of my favorite authors. Lahiri wrote this in Italian and then translated it into English. The central character is single and lives alone. She teaches but remains unmotivated. She wanders-she swims, goes to a coffee shop, goes to a bookstore, goes to a museum and gets a manicure. She does things alone but has interactions and connections. Lahiri writes with an obvious appreciation for solitude.
In Every Mirror She’s Black by Lola Akinmade Akerstrom Sourcebooks Landmark, September 2021. 405 pg.
Three Black women are linked to a wealthy and influential white man in Stockholm. Kemi Adeyemi, a successful marketing executive, is hired by Johnny Van Lundin. Flight attendant Brittany-Rae Johnson meets Johnny on a flight and he pursues her even though she’s living with a longterm boyfriend. Muna is a refugee from Somalia who gets a job cleaning offices at Johnny’s company. They’re all navigating in a white world. Told from multiple perspectives, this novel addresses racism, classism, fetishism, tokenism.
The Last One by Fatima Daas Other Press, November 2021. 193 pg.
“I hate everything that has to do with the female universe as my mother presents it to me, but I haven’t realized it yet.”
A very personal coming-of-age novel based on the author’s experiences as a young French lesbian and Muslim. The author uses her own name, Fatima Daas, for the central character. The daughter of religious Algerian immigrants who consider love and sexuality taboo, Fatima struggles to justify her sexuality alongside her religious beliefs as she becomes more independent. It’s written in a unique style and reads most like a memoir. It’s difficult to know where fiction ends and reality begins. It’s an interesting way to write a novel.
Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin Atria Books, July 2021. 256 pg.
“I can’t get a pet because one day it would die, and I doubt I’d recover.”
Gilda is rather fixated on death. It’s all the 20-something can think about. She struggles with depression and anxiety. After losing her bookstore job, she wanders into a church after seeing a flier for mental health support, and winds up with a job. It’s an interesting place for her to work as she’s not too convinced about the existence of any deity. She’s found herself to be out of place most of the time. It’s thoughtful, relatable and filled with dark humor.
Backlist titles:
Catch & Kill by Ronan Farrow Little, Brown and Company, 2019. 608 pg.
Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Ronan Farrow recounts breaking the story on the seuxal assault and harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein. I listened to the audiobook which I don’t often do for nonfiction that’s this long and dense. Being extremely engaging and affable, Farrow tells good stories. It’s detailed and descriptive and takes you right there into the conspiracies, power and patriarchal constructs.
Writers & Lovers by Lily King Grove Press, 2020. 320 pg.
Grieving the death of her mother and the end of a relationship, a struggling writer, Casey Peabody, moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts. She lives in a garage apartment and makes ends meet waiting tables while working on a novel.She soon leaves her waitress job for a higher paying job with benefits. She’s able to see a doctor for the first time in five years. She receives several startling diagnoses. She starts dating two guys– the hot guy whose kisses make her “melt” and the older widowed writer with two children. A loan collection agency threatens to garnish her wages. As a child, she was a golf prodigy and earned a scholarship to Duke. Then she found her coach father spying on girls in the locker room. Her mother recently died of cancer and she worries about getting cancer herself. She finally finishes her book and sends it out to agents. I love books about writing and writers. I found this relatable, smart and engaging. It’s a novel about creativity, loss, persistence, independence and pursuing one’s goals.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett Riverhead, 2020. 343 pg.
“She hadn’t adopted a disguise or even a new name. She’d walked in a colored girl and left a white one. She had become white only because everyone thought she was.”
The Vignes sisters are identical twins. At 16, they ran away from home. Now, years later, one lives in the same Southern town they grew up in and one lives in California and passes as white. The novel covers the 1940s-1950s. It’s brilliant, provocative, insightful, riveting. Absolute perfection in addressing race, gender, identity, belonging, genetics, ancestry, nature vs. nurture and independence. The story and characters stay with you for a long time.
Band of Sisters by Lauren Willig. William Morrow| March 2, 2021| 519 pages | $27.99| ISBN: 9780062986153
RATING: 4/5*
Based on actual events during WWI, a group of Smith College alumnae formed the Smith College Relief Unit and traveled to northern France to assist in civilian relief work in 1917. They traveled around delivering supplies, providing medical aid and educating school children in decimated villages. Since she can speak French and drive, Kate Moran, a scholarship student, gets recruited by her friend Emmie Van Alden. Kate leaves her job as a teacher and joins 17 other Smith women, including two doctors.
“Debutante nonsense, her mother called it. Good enough for those who didn’t have to worry about getting their living.
But this was work too. She might not be paid for it, not exactly, but the Unit was covering her room and board, and how else was she ever to see France, even France at war?”
Emmie Van Alden comes from a wealthy family and doesn’t need to earn a living. The unit’s mostly composed of privileged women. They could’ve stayed safe in the United States but they chose to help with war efforts and that’s to be commended. The unit leader, Mrs. Rutherford, provides some statistics: “In the little over a week that we’ve been here, Miss Van Alden alone has already made fifty-one calls on forty-two families.” She also noted that the medical department had seen nearly three hundred patients.
Throughout the novel, Kate struggles with confidence, belonging and feeling like an outsider. She even overhears another woman commenting that she didn’t know that there were any Catholics at Smith. However, she’s extremely focused and efficient and even becomes the assistant director of the unit for a while. However, when Kate finds out that Emmie’s family is paying her room and board, it draws another rift in their tenuous relationship. Later she finds out that Emmie’s cousin, Julia, one of the doctors on the excursion, comes from a poor family as well. To Emmie’s dismay, Julia and Kate become close, making Emmie feel like the odd one out. There’s a lot going on in this novel.
“She’d thought they’d been happy at Smith. It had seemed to work then. Emmie provided all the affection and Kate provided the practical skills, and between them, they balanced out rather nicely.”
The unit faces more challenges than anticipated once they reach their post in Grecourt. There’s constant shelling from the Germans, threats to be ousted by the British army and French bureaucracy. Villagers suffer from pneumonia, measles, tetanus, syphilis. One night, Kate and Emmie run out of gas and get lost in a snowstorm and are nearly sexually assaulted by some soldiers. The women in the unit prevail despite undermining, mistreatment and discouragement by men. There’s some romance mixed in, too. There aren’t that many women around France at this time and men come for dinner parties every week. Emmie flirts and falls in love with British Captain Will DeWitt (of the DeWitt biscuits!). He tells her that he’ll propose to her after the war ends.
I’d not heard of the Smith College Relief Unit before discovering this book. I’m a women’s college graduate (Simmons College ‘91) so this particularly appealed to me. Author Lauren Willig completed meticulous research straight from the source at Smith College Special Collections. She pored over letters, journals, reports and photos. There are still so many stories one can cull from historical documents. It’s fascinating. I’ve not read a lot of books based in WWI so I appreciated that as well. This is why I love to read historical fiction. I learn about events I didn’t know that much about and am transported to different times and historical moments in a creative, accesible and memorable manner. While the book dragged a little bit at times and might have been too long, I overall enjoyed reading about these brave, determined women. They must have been forever bonded by their remarkable experience during WWI.
Band of Sisters is the perfect novel to read during Women’s History Month.
As we hunkered down for quarantine in March 2020, there were at least plenty of great television series to watch. Like many others, I binge-watched The Queen’s Gambit and Bridgerton– riveting shows for very different reasons. I appreciate interesting documentary series like Lenox Hill. I also found several other shows worth watching. These are the ones I consider to be the best.
Unorthodox— this show about a Jewish woman, Etsy, escaping her Orthodox marriage and community to live a life abroad is fascinating and riveting. It’s a moving story based on a memoir by Deborah Feldman. The brilliant script and acting makes it especially compelling. Much of the series is in Yiddish and it really doesn’t matter as it’s a universal sentiment expressed throughout the series.
Mrs. America— Conservative activist and anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly leads a fight against the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. We see feminist icons Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Azbug, Betty Friedan, and others campaigning for the ERA. Stellar cast with Cate Blanchett as Schlafly, Rose Byrne as Steinem, Uzo Aduba as Chisholm, Margo Martindale as Azbug and Tracey Ullman as Friedan.
Lenox Hill— documentary that follows four doctors– two brain surgeons, an emergency room physician and an OBGYN– as they practice at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. I worked in healthcare and had considered a career in nursing so I’m particularly interested in medical documentaries and dramas.
Stateless— Inspired by actual events, it focuses on the intersecting lives of four people at an immigration detention center in Australia: a flight attendant escaping a cult, an Afghan refugee seeking asylum, a young Australian father in a dead-end job and a stressed bureaucrat caught up in a national scandal. Difficult to watch at times, it addresses many international issues including humane treatment of refugees and mental illness.
Mrs. Fletcher— I LOVED THIS NOVEL (by Tom Perrotta) and loved the series too. Mrs. Fletcher is a single mom and recent empty-nester as her son heads off to college. The senior center director turns to porn and a writing class to fill the void. It’s amusing, raw, provocative and endearing with a solid cast of characters. Kathyrn Hahn is fabulous.
The Queen’s Gambit— what can I say about this brilliant show that’s not already been said? Who knew chess could be so thrilling and stylish?
The Flight Attendant— When I read this novel a few years ago when it first came out, I liked it but also found it confusing and did not like the ending at all. The series is fantastic. Kaley Cuoco is fresh, energetic, extremely appealing and vulnerable as Cassie, the flight attendant with a drinking issue, who wakes up in a hotel next to a dead man with no idea what happened. Zosia Mamet shines as Cassie’s no-nonsense attorney best friend. Can’t say much more without giving anything away.
Bridgerton— I know everyone’s watching this and loves it. Gorgeous scenery, costumes and cast– it’s Gossip Girl (which I haven’t seen all that much of) meets Downton Abbey and Pride and Prejudice. I haven’t read the romance novels on which the series is based but I’ve put in a request to my library (there’s a waitlist as I’m not the only one curious).
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