LITERATURE

The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism

by Sarah Chihaya & others

Columbia Univ. (Literature Now). Jan. 2020. 280p. ISBN 9780231194570. pap. $25. LIT

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VERDICT A truly innovative approach to understanding the author-reader connection made all the more compelling for having one of the 20th century’s greatest literary works at its core.

Reviewed by In book three of pseudonymous Italian author Elena Ferrante’s distinguished “Neapolitan Quartet,” Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, aspiring young writer Elena mourns her separation from best friend Lila, having imagined them “writing together, being authors together, drawing power from each other because what was ours was inimitably ours.” Reading and writing collectively similarly attracted novelist Katherine Hill (The Violet Hour) and academics Chihaya (English, Princeton Univ.), Merve Emre (English, Univ. of Oxford), and Jill Richards (English, women, gender, sexuality studies, Yale Univ.), who, from June to September 2015, together set out to read a book a month from the Quartet, each writing one or two letters per novel. The project transformed how the authors saw themselves as readers and writers, and quickly evolved from a casual experiment into a critical methodology they would later apply to their course syllabi. Months of conversation on and off the page gave shape to the long essays that round out this freshly conceived collection and carefully analyze Ferrante’s texts while also exploring the intricacies of female friendship. VERDICT A truly innovative approach to understanding the author-reader connection made all the more compelling for having one of the 20th century’s greatest literary works at its core.Annalisa Pešek, Library Journal , Feb 01, 2020

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