Marieke van Laake Books

Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, the first of the Neapolitan novels, Elena Ferrante's fame as one of our most compelling, insightful, and stylish contemporary authors has grown enormously. She has gained admirers among authors -- Jhumpa Lahiri, Elizabeth Strout, Claire Messud, to name a few --- and critics -- James Wood, John Freeman, Eugenia Williamson, for example. But her most resounding success has undoubtedly been with readers, who have discovered in Ferrante a writer who speaks with great power and beauty of the mysteries of belonging, human relationships, love, family, and friendship§In this third Neapolitan novel, Elena and Lila, the two girls whom readers first met in My Brilliant Friend, have become women. Lila married at sixteen and has a young son; she has left her husband and the comforts her marriage brought and now works as a common laborer. Elena has left the neighborhood, earned her college degree, and published a successful novel, all of which has opened the doors to a world of learned interlocutors and richly furnished salons. Both women have attempted are pushing against the walls of a prison that would have seen them living a life of misery, ignorance and submission. They are afloat on the great sea of opportunities that opened up during the nineteen-seventies. Yet they are still very much bound to each other by a strong, unbreakable bond

In this follow-up to My Brilliant Friend, Lila is imprisoned by marriage, while Elena continues her journey of self-discovery, until their friendship, which is at the center of their emotional lives, forces them both to mature into women. Original.

Beginning in the 1950s Elena and Lila grow up in Naples, Italy, mirroring two different aspects of their nation. (This book was previously listed in Forecast.) Original. 50,000 first printing.

In deze roman komen drie mensen aan het woord die zwaar door het leven zijn getekend. Zij blikken terug op de cruciale gebeurtenissen in hun bestaan. Zij worstelen met liefde die omslaat in haat, met destructieve gevoelens en angst, en met de vraag of hemel en hel bestaan. Hun ervaringen laten zien hoe duister het leven kan zijn, maar ook hoe die donkere kant uitzicht biedt op iets nieuws en hoe het geloof in de liefde de mens in staat stelt boven zijn beperkingen uit te groeien. Susanna Tamaro bezit de gave om aangrijpende gebeurtenissen zuiver en beknopt weer te geven. Haar kristalheldere stijl maakt van Antwoord mij een dwingende roman over lijden en verlossing, die direct doordringt tot het hart van de lezer.