RaveAsymptote... this collection of Ferrante’s lectures cannot be timelier in introducing Ferrante’s ideas and literary practices to a larger, global audience outside her immediate Italian-speaking following ... Ferrante takes readers on a journey of discovery of writing practices. She coheres the realms of life and literature to assiduously pursue answers to questions that female writers might have, on how to blaze a trail of success in the patrilineal literary world ... Ferrante does not give away definitive rules on how to write well, but she makes her definitive view on writing clear ... Ann Goldstein’s translation of this collection of essays, for the most part, is also fluid and clear, emulating the familiar voice Ferrante’s English-language readers have become familiar with. The seamless collaboration between author and translator is an unmistakable triumph, and readers are surely hoping for more novels by Ferrante, translations by Goldstein, and adaptations on the silver screen to follow from this exceptionally fruitful and longstanding relationship.
Gianfranco Calligarich, tr. Howard Curtis
PositiveAsymptoteUnambitious and apathetic as he might appear to be, however, the story of Leo is nevertheless one of delicate beauty that imparts the prevalent, existential angst that defined a generation of young men amidst the Italy of the 70s. In the vein of postwar Italian neorealism, Calligarich spends much of the text on bringing texture and illustration to the humble details of everyday life, and the resulting cinematic effect can likely be referred back to the author’s experience as a screenwriter. Leo’s story counteracts the adulation of glamour and happiness in Fascist propaganda, which holds little to no concern for the personal difficulties of everyday life—boredom, failure, or grief. Instead of telling the simple, customary story of a powerful and desirable man amidst a cosmopolitan enchantment, Last Summer in the City presents a marginalized individual’s quotidian, melancholic tale in a provincial setting. The quiet, understated prose emanates an almost diaristic intimacy into the narrator’s mind, providing an avenue to access his inner vacuum of emptiness, and the terrible simplicity of his apathy ... It is a timeless work of watching life flow past, providing an alternate sea for both the ones who seek to escape the mainstream waters of progress, and those who have been forgotten and left in the wayside.
