Troubling Love: The first novel by the author of My Brilliant Friend

Following her mother’s untimely death Delia sets off on a breathtaking odyssey through the chaotic suffocating streets of her native Naples in search of the truth about her family. Reality is buried in the fertile soil of memory and Delia digs deep to reconcile the past with the mysterious events leading up to her mother’s death. Spurred by a series of anonymous telephone calls Delia reconstructs her mother’s final days and with every new discovery must face the possibility that her mother was not at all the person Delia imagined her to be. To learn the truth and to untangle the knot of lies passions and memories that bind mother and daughter Delia must return to her roots to the Naples of her childhood.One of the most celebrated Italian novels of recent decades and subsequently a successful film by director Mario Martone Troubling Love is Elena Ferrante’s astounding first novel. From The New Yorker This slender novel is set in motion by the strange circumstances surrounding a death but it is more concerned with the enigma of memory and self. Delia a cartoonist living in Rome receives three incoherent phone calls from her mother who is supposed to be on her way from Naples; the next day her mothers nearly naked body washes up onshore at a seaside resort town. In Naples for the funeral Delia is confronted with the past she tried to disown as she struggles to make sense of the events leading to her mothers drowning. A shadowy figure named Caserta the man Delia as a five-year-old accused her mother of having an affair with reemerges as possibly the last person to see her alive. Ferrantes polished language belies the rawness of her imagery which conveys perversity violence and bodily functions in ripe detail. Delias discovery of the secret of her childhood is made all the more jarring by the storys disorienting mixture of fantasy and reality.Copyright © 2006 From Booklist Forty-five-year-old Delia returns to her childhood home of Naples Italy to discover the truth behind the drowning death of her mother Amalia. Suspicious circumstances surround Amalias last days; the humble seamstress who never flaunted her beauty for fear of her jealous husbands wrath was wearing nothing but an expensive designer brassiere at the time of her death. As Delia wanders the vibrant streets of Naples she ponders three dubious men who figured prominently in her mothers past: Amalias irascible brother known for hurling insults at acquaintances and strangers alike; her husband a mediocre painter with no qualms about slapping Amalia in public; and his lascivious agent whose marriage never precluded him from propositioning other women. Ironically it is her mothers death that enables Delia to make better sense of her own life. I realized . . . that in fact I had Amalia under my skin like a hot liquid that had been injected into me at some unknown time. Pseudonymous Italian novelist Ferrante (The Days of Abandonment 2005) delivers a brutally frank tale about the dangerous intersection of rage and desire.Allison BlockCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Review Praise forTroubling LoveTroubling 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 LipskyThe New York TimesA tour de forceTroubling Love is a harrowing tour of a feminine psyche under siege. Together withThe Days of Abandonment it confirms Ferrantes reputation as one of Italys best contemporary novelists.-Seattle TimesWith 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 JournalFerrantes polished languag