The Joys Of Listening To Elena Ferrante’s New Novel, In Italian

The book isn’t due to be published until June in English translation. The writer Martha Cooley asks her husband to read the novel – a first-person account by a woman – to her. “Low in pitch and volume, his voice is distinctly male. He doesn’t have a Neapolitan accent but a northern Italian one. Sometimes I have to ask him to speak up, or to slow down; it’s easy for him to gain speed without realizing it. Now and then he’ll stop reading, realizing he’s just botched a sentence’s syntax. Returning to the start, he’ll reread the sentence slowly, and I can hear where he went wrong.” – Los Angeles Review of Books