The Neopolitan novels are best saved for when there’s time for an unbroken binge. There’s a neighbourhood, a slum brutally ruled by Camorrists, politics and revolution, earthquakes and murders and at its heart two fascinating women. Mount Vesuvius is a fitting backdrop to the two women’s intense and ambiguous friendship and to the choices they face as Italy erupts into modernity. The writing is fearless, immersive, recounts frankly all human experience, emphatically that which seems unsayable. With the fourth and final book (The Story of the Lost Child), I predict that #FerranteFever will become a #FerrantePandemic by summer’s end.
