Italy · Literary fiction
Troubling Love
After her mother’s unexplained drowning, Delia returns to her native Naples to piece together the last days of a life she thought she understood. Strange phone calls, family encounters and memories of childhood lead her through a city in which the past keeps intruding on the present.
Ferrante makes the streets feel close, crowded and unsettling. Delia’s search becomes an investigation into her own memories and the fear, desire and violence bound up in her relationship with her mother. A short psychological novel, it offers an intense way into Naples through the experience of returning home.
Ferrante’s polished language belies the rawness of her imagery.
The New Yorker, quoted by Open Road Media
Psychological mystery; Family; Memory; Mothers and daughters; Screen adaptation