A review by annrose_007
Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey by Elena Ferrante

4.0

This non fictional work of Ferrante carries her correspondences with her publishers, interviews and responses to her readers and even contemporaries. These writings dating from the time of her first literary publication (1991) to 2016 shows her continuing growth as a writer and her clear stance on the punctilious use of language and her anonymity. Inspite of having only read her Neapolitan Quartet, I went for this because I was curious to get behind her writing. On second thoughts, I should have been more patient and waited till I've read other works as well. Being a writer who keeps her private life away from a public gaze, in this book she allows her readers to have a glance at her writing process, her formative years of becoming a writer and even provides a description of her working space. She discusses in detail the recurring motifs and themes in her works like abandonment, loss, borders, complexities in a mother- daughter relationship and even her difficult relationship with Naples. She says she keeps away from politics but interested in economic and social contexts of her country . Yet she does not deny the ideological underpinnings in her novels. Though I might disagree with her perspective on 'politics' as a wholesome category as reflected in her critique of Naples, Berlusconi and media manipulation, her discussions surrounding feminism, women writing and location of women writers within a male literary tradition clearly marks her ideological standing. Throughout her correspondences, she maintains an interesting obsession with 'literary truth'. Something which in her opinion, shouldn't be confused with realism or verisimilitude. Her honesty as a writer can be observed from the care with which she attends to the words she had written as it gets translated from one medium to another, like adaptations.
Though some parts may seem repetitive, it can be owed mostly to the repetitiveness of the queries posed to her about her anonymity and the hype and constructed mystery surrounding it. If I had read Neapolitan Quartet with an insatiable greed, I read this one like a meditation. Taking notes, marking words and looking between and beneath words.