Troubling Love - by Elena Ferrante (Paperback)

About the Book

Following her mother's untimely and mysterious death, Delia embarks on a voyage of discovery through the streets of her native Naples searching for the truth about her family.

Book Synopsis

A woman goes home to Naples after her mother's mysterious death in a "tour de force" by the New York Times-bestselling author of My Brilliant Friend (Seattle Times).

Following her mother's untimely and unexplained drowning, which was preceded by a series of strange phone calls, forty-five-year-old Delia leaves Rome and embarks on a voyage of discovery through the beguiling yet often hostile streets of her native Naples. She is searching for the truth about her family and the men in her mother's life, past and present, including an abusive husband. What she discovers will be more unsettling than she imagines, but will also reveal truths about herself, in this psychological mystery marked by "tactile, beautifully restrained prose" (Publishers Weekly) about mothers and daughters and the complicated knot of lies and emotions that binds them.

"Ferrante's polished language belies the rawness of her imagery." --The New Yorker

"With the quick-paced mystery guiding the story, Delia explores her relationship with her mother, unraveling memories and secrets repressed since childhood and coming to terms with an upbringing filled with jealousy and violence . . . Troubling Love is vivid and powerful." --Library Journal

Review Quotes

Praise for Troubling Love

"Troubling Love is a psychological mystery...Ferrante is fascinated by the moments when a personality--like a wire stretched too far from its power source--shorts and corrodes."
--David Lipsky, The New York Times

"A tour de force, Troubling Love is a harrowing tour of a feminine psyche under siege. Together with The Days of Abandonment, it confirms Ferrante's reputation as one of Italy's best contemporary novelists."
--Seattle Times

"With quick-paced mystery guiding the story, Delia explores her relationship with her mother, unraveling memories and secrets repressed since childhood and coming to terms with an upbringing filled with jealousy and violence...Troubling Love is vivid and powerful."
--Library Journal

"Ferrante's polished language belies the rawness of her imagery."
--The New Yorker

"Ferrante delivers a brutally frank tale about the dangerous intersection of rage and desire."
--Booklist

Praise for Elena Ferrante

"Elena Ferrante's decision to remain biographically unavailable is her greatest gift to readers, and maybe her boldest creative gesture."
--David Kurnick, Public Books

"Everyone should read anything with Ferrante's name on it."
--Eugenia Williamson, The Boston Globe

"Ferrante has written about female identity with a heft and sharpness unmatched by anyone since Doris Lessing."
--Elizabeth Lowry, The Wall Street Journal

"Ferrante has become Italy's best known writer. In our era of social media accessibility, shameless self-promotion, and hot young celebrity culture, this is nothing short of astounding."
--Gina Frangello, Electric Literature

"Ferrante's writing seems to say something that hasn't been said before--it isn't easy to specify what this is--in a way so compelling its readers forget where they are, abandon friends and disdain sleep."
--Joanna Biggs, The London Review of Books

"To disagree over the quality of a Ferrante passage is often to run up against what you cannot answer or digest."
--Jedediah Purdy, The Los Angeles Review of Books

"Who, in American literature today, deals with the subtleties of class difference in such a painful and sensitive way, while achieving even a fraction of Ferrante's massive popularity? . . . We must go to the fictionalized Naples of Ferrante to read the story we want to believe can happen again in our country."
--Alissa Quart, BuzzFeed

About the Author

p>Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), which was made into a film directed by Roberto Faenza, Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), adapted by Mario Martone, and The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008), soon to be a film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal. She is also the author of a Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey (Europa, 2016) in which she recounts her experience as a novelist, and a children's picture book illustrated by Mara Cerri, The Beach at Night (Europa, 2016). The four volumes known as the "Neapolitan quartet" (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child) were published in America by Europa between 2012 and 2015. The first season of the HBO series My Brilliant Friend, directed by Severio Costanzo premiered in 2018.
Ann Goldstein is an editor at The New Yorker. Her translations for Europa Editions include novels by Amara Lakhous, Alessandro Piperno, and Elena Ferrante's bestselling My Brilliant Friend. She lives in New York.