Starred review from September 1, 2020
An overheard remark prompts an adolescent girl to uncover the truth about her relatives (and herself) in Ferrante's precise dissection of one family's life in Naples. Upon hearing her father refer to her, disparagingly, as having the same face as a despised and estranged relative, 12-year-old Giovanna, previously a good student and affectionate daughter, embarks on an odyssey of detection and discovery through areas of Naples from which her educated and progressive parents have shielded her. Desperate to determine whether she, indeed, resembles the abhorred Aunt Vittoria, Giovanna seeks out her father's sister and develops a fraught relationship with the troubled woman. The process of untangling generations of internecine deceit and rivalry--including the provenance of a peripatetic heirloom bracelet--leads Giovanna to truths about the conventional lies told by her parents and to decisions about how she wishes to conduct her own, not-yet-adult, life. (The bracelet appears to have mutable properties and serves as either charm or handcuff, just another thing to ask the enigmatic author about over coffee.) Ferrante revisits previously explored themes--violence against women, female friendships, the corrosive effects of class disparities--albeit in a more rarified sector of Naples (the privileged "upper" neighborhood of Rione Alto) than in her earlier Neapolitan Quartet. Giovanna's nascent sexuality is more frankly explored than that of previous Ferrante protagonists, permitting the author to highlight two sides of teen sexuality: agency and abuse. Goldstein's fluid translation once again allows readers into the head of a young woman recalling with precision and emotion a series of events which lead to a point of confession. Ferrante's legion of devoted readers will be encouraged by another equivocal ending, permitting the hope of further exploration of Giovanna's journey in future volumes. A girl, a city, an inhospitable society: Ferrante's formula works again!
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Starred review from August 1, 2020
In the late 1970s in Naples, 12-year-old Giovanna overhears her father say that "she's getting the face of Vittoria." Giovanna hasn't met her father's sister, but her parents invoke the woman's name "like the name of a monstrous being who taints and infects anyone who touches her." And so, on the precipice of puberty, Giovanna decides to meet her aunt and discover the reasons for this surely unflattering comparison. Fans of Ferrante's first two Neopolitan novels, My Brilliant Friend (2012) and The Story of a New Name (2013), will especially revel in Giovanna's confessional, perceptive, gut-wrenching, and often funny narration of what she calls her "arduous approach to the adult world." Vittoria introduces Giovanna to a Naples outside of her upscale neighborhood and school, to sex and romance, to new people, and to the idea that her parents might sometimes be wrong. How wrong, however, becomes a relative question as her parents separate, and Giovanna navigates her new household; the moods of fiery, loving Vittoria; and the cyclone of her developing self. When an adult, struggling to explain herself, tells Giovanna, "The truth is difficult, growing up you'll understand that, novels aren't sufficient for it," readers will smile, sigh, and agree to disagree.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)
October 1, 2020
Recalling Ferrante's acclaimed "Neapolitan Quartet" in its keen investigation of female coming of age, Ferrante's new novel features inquiring young Giovanna, shocked at age 13 to overhear her father, Andrea, derisively describe her as starting to look like his sister, Vittoria. The cultured Andrea and Vittoria, brash and challenging, have been estranged since Andrea abandoned their lower-class roots and broke up Vittoria's passionate affair with a married policeman. Giovanna doesn't even know Vittoria but finagles a meeting and succumbs to her dark charm, even as Vittoria preaches virulently against Giovanna's parents and pulls Giovanna into her unexpectedly close relationship with the wife and children of her now-dead lover. Giovanna soon begins feeling alienated from her own parents, but to her credit (and Ferrante's) she doesn't allow this tension to become an either/or situation, eventually questioning Vittoria's pronouncements and finding her own way to adulthood. VERDICT While Ferrante sometimes draws out what she's made obvious, her spot-on delineation of Giovanna's struggle will delight her many fans.
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