PositiveEsquireGiovanna’s burgeoning love life is the underlying energy of the novel, the intrigue that keeps us hooked ... the distancing quality of translation, the measured, formalising effect, is in some ways fortuitous: is puberty not, after all, a time when we feel disassociated from ourselves, like aliens in our own skin? ... Somehow, Ferrante finds and asks the question that is at the heart of the adolescent experience, that underscores all the pettiness and the posturing and the bravado and the crippling self-doubt. \'I feel ugly, like I’m a bad person,\' writes Giovanna, \'and yet I’d like to be loved.\' Not silly at all.
