“Master of the Unsayable”: Elena Ferrante’s Representation of the Complexities of Female Friendship as a Form of “Truth-Telling”

Abstract

Italian author Elena Ferrante has been described as the “master of the unsayable”. By examining two of her novels, namely My Brilliant Friend (New York: Europa Editions, 2016) and The Lying Life of Adults (London: Europa Editions, 2020), I attempt to explore her realist methodology and depiction of female friendship as a means of creating a sense of truth-telling. Both novels focus on friendships set in Naples, although My Brilliant Friend is set in the post-World War II era and The Lying Life of Adults in the 1990s. I examine Ferrante’s use of content, characterisation, the theme of friendship, and writerly style. By comparing the novels and her techniques in this way I identify what are classically realist methods as well as the means by which Ferrante sets herself apart by using language and subject matter in unique ways to achieve a sense of truthfulness. The article concludes with the proposition that both novels address unsayable or taboo issues in a stark denotative style. However, in My Brilliant Friend Ferrante achieves a deeper sense of this through a particular metaphorical technique that she terms frantumaglia, or fragmentation.

Keywords:

• Elena Ferrante
• female friendship
• realism
• My Brilliant Friend
• The Lying Life of Adults
• truth in fiction

Notes

1 Goldstein has received a Guggenheim fellowship, the PEN Renato Poggioli Prize, and awards from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.