Critics are often divided on Ferrante’s non-fiction works but I really enjoyed these four lectures that have been published into the slim volume In the Margins. As a woman of a certain age I fully understood Ferrante’s struggle with compliance – writing with careful precision, ensuring the writing is literally and figuratively within the boundaries of what is allowed to women and the whole struggle to find your own voice.
With the addition of judging everything we produce against the patriarchal literary world expectations it is a wonder female authors exist at all. Ferrante grew up reading male authors as they were held up to be the best, the literary, the most interesting. So did I. It was men’s stories that were shown up to be the most interesting, the most important and certainly history was told from the male point of view. Female voices and women’s stories were not seen and certainly not studied in Ferrante’s education or my early education.
I did listen to In The Margins as an audio book which gave me the experience of evaluating Ferrante’s words as lectures rather than essay which may have influenced my view of the work. However, I so enjoyed the writing that I am going back to immerse myself in Ferrante’s words and concepts in the book form so I can dwell in her mind for longer.
As a woman of a certain age I fully understood Ferrante’s struggle with compliance – writing with careful precision, ensuring the writing is literally and figuratively within the boundaries of what is allowed to women and the whole struggle to find your own voice.
- Jane Cowell
In these lectures, Ferrante shares a lot of her struggle with her own creative writing process, which for the very reclusive author is a major entry into her world for her readers, her growth as a writer and the journey to finding her own voice. Ferrante stopped writing when the first person narrative felt like a prison for her writing and her thinking and she shares that she thought she would never write again. She continued to read critically with Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B Tokias stimulating her in new ways. Stein wrote about her own life through the guise of her lifelong companion and Ferrante realised that a story could be told using the “necessary other”. This was another benefit of In the Margins, as we learn more about Ferrante’s reading journey you come across some intriguing titles, and I have definitely made a new reading list! I may have to learn Italian to read some of them though.
Using this narrative construct she was able to write My Brilliant Friend and readers had that wonderful series to immerse ourselves in which was stimulated from Ferrante’s own reading journey. My Brilliant Friend has also been made into a TV series so if you do not have the time to read it you can watch the series.
Totally recommend this if you enjoy Ferrante’s writing and also if you love writing and are exploring finding your own voice – where ever that voice comes from and was influenced by. Ferrante totally gives you confidence to go on a messy writing journey – no longer writing in the margins but finding your own way of telling your stories. I loved that she shared her insight that the most interesting parts of her writing came when her characters said one thing but did another – so even her characters can find their own way seemingly independent of the writer. In the Margins is a fascinating insight into the mind of a wonderful author who has found her female voice, no longer afraid to tell stories in her own way.
In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing
Also available in Large Print, and as eAudio (Libby).
