The Millions: Elizabeth Strout says that reading Ferrante "reminded me of that child-like excitement when you can’t look up from the page, when your eyes seem to be popping from your head, when you think: I didn’t know books could do this!"

This year brought me the work of Elena Ferrante, and reading her reminded me of that child-like excitement when you can’t look up from the page, when your eyes seem to be popping from your head, when you think: I didn’t know books could do this! But there is nothing child-like about Ferrante’s work. It’s adult stuff. The Days of Abandonment deals with the fracture of a marriage, and it takes it straight on. There is a profound thrill in witnessing such honest ferocity on the page. What followed for me were the first two books of her trilogy, My Brilliant Friend, and then The Story of a New Name, and finishing the latter, I had to stumble around the apartment before I could re-enter my own world. The world she creates in these two books is a world of poverty and harshness and childhood friendship that is deep in its love and envy. These scenes take place mostly in Naples, with some excursions as the narrator gets older, but all of this barely scrapes the surface of what Ferrante really does. Which is to keep your face pressed into the realities of class and sex and violence, and make you grateful to be there. I absolutely loved it.

-Elizabeth Strout