In each interview in this volume, Ferrante repeats her conviction that an author’s duty ends with writing a meaningful book. One of the many pleasures of this book is the increasing feistiness of her replies ... American readers hungry for every Ferrante sentence they can get will find many here in which she lowers her knife through the bread of life with the same startling force as she does in her novels.
This is a fascinating volume, as ever beautifully translated by Ann Goldstein. At times, it is as absorbing as Ferrante’s extraordinary fictions and touches on troubling unconscious matter with the same visceral intensity. For those who can’t wait for the next Ferrante fiction to sink into, it provides a stopgap. There are perhaps one or two interviews with wordy interviewers too many. But occasional repetitions are outweighed by the insights into Ferrante’s writing process, her love of story above the fine, polished style so prized in contemporary Italian fiction.
...the publication of Frantumaglia turns out to be a hugely misguided endeavor on the part of both Ms. Ferrante and her publishers. It’s a padded, often self-indulgent volume that undermines her stated belief that 'books, once they are written, have no need of their authors' ... Elsewhere, she sounds pretentious and self-important ... Such self-conscious and stilted statements stand in stark contrast to the visceral immediacy of Ms. Ferrante’s novels.
In Frantumaglia, Ferrante seems to anticipate her own discovery: The book is like a mask hidden beneath a mask, ready to be displayed when the first one is torn off ... [it] is Ferrante for the Ferranteans, her readers who have long enjoyed the puzzle over her work and her self without ever needing it solved ... Many of these recent interviews are a pleasure to read—Ferrante’s professorial side is less didactic, more relaxed ... In Frantumaglia, Ferrante asserts the most fundamental and important truth of who she is: that she is someone who will do only as she will, and nothing else.
The personality of the writer that emerges is so intense, difficult, clever, moody, snappy, perfectionist and insecure it can’t help but influence our response to her fiction. It is also entirely at odds with what she has set out to achieve ... On the one hand is its author’s unusual, fierce intelligence. Her brand of angry feminism is attractive. So is her uncomfortable honesty about motherhood, friendship, families and about writing and reading. Yet underlying it all is a tiresome preciousness about her own work.
...for admirers of Ferrante’s work who are not particularly interested in a biographical reading of her fiction, Frantumaglia offers something else: a chance to consider her strange, spectral presence in the world of letters ... Her discussion of her books and her artistic influences makes for some of the most absorbing parts of Frantumaglia.
...one would be hard-pressed to find another contemporary author whose letters and interviews could comprise a compelling volume of nearly 400 pages ... Frantumaglia presents Ferrante as an author who has possessed a coherent artistic philosophy since the early days of her career ... she opens up [the] truth-seeking process with rare candor.
...the book is not at all a jumble of fragments. It is in fact unified by two subjects that dominate the collection: her insistence on preserving her anonymity as a private person, and her intentness on explaining herself as a writer—that is, on identifying the source of the emotional energy behind the work ... Ferrante’s answers are impressive for the coherence and expansiveness with which she takes up each question.
Whenever Ferrante is forced to communicate about her work, her communication is laced with an intense self-surveillance. The book is restrained and self-protective, and I find myself protective of her as well ... She spends a significant portion of the book repeatedly explaining to journalists, her publisher, filmmakers, and others why she feels the need to remain anonymous. It doesn’t seem difficult to grasp: she believes that books should be able to exist in the world without being tied to a personality. For this reason, it has been suggested that the assembling of this book is antithetical to her professed desire for anonymity, that it seems to fly in the face of her convictions. I do not believe this to be the case...Frantumaglia contains a similar construction of female identity that we see in her novels, and, as with her novels, the line between fact and fiction is unclear ... The same kind of immediacy Ferrante exhibits in her fiction is most present and potent in Frantumaglia when she speaks of her concern for other women ... Ferrante’s true readers (as opposed to fans — she draws a sharp distinction between the two) will be grateful for Frantumaglia and the story it tells, which is exquisite, regardless of those who would fact-check her.
