The Voice That Stopped My Grading Pen
I was sitting at my kitchen table at 11:30 PM, staring at a stack of Catcher in the Rye essays that were making me question every life choice leading up to this moment, when I hit play on this book. Ten minutes later, Giovanna's father compares her changing face to her estranged Aunt Vittoria, and I audibly gasped. I literally dropped my red pen. My cat looked at me like I'd finally snapped.
That's the thing about Ferrante. She knows exactly where the knife goes. And honestly? Marisa Tomei knows exactly how to twist it.
(Yes, that Marisa Tomei. My wife Denise was very excited about this casting choice.)
When Aunt Vittoria Speaks
Let's talk about the performance, because this isn't your standard "British person reading quietly in a library" classic. Tomei treats this like a one-woman show on Broadway.
When she does the voice of Aunt Vittoria—the family pariah—she drops her register into this guttural, raspy growl that sounds like a pack of cigarettes smoked in a rainstorm. It's jarring. It's loud. And you know what? It's fantastic.
I've seen reviews saying she "over-acts." Look, I spend my days with teenagers. Everything is over-acted. Everything is the end of the world. Tomei captures that specific, suffocating intensity of adolescence where a single comment from your dad can shatter your reality. She doesn't just read the dialogue; she spits it out.
If you want a soothing bedtime story, this ain't it. This is a performance that demands you pay attention. (Sorry, Principal Martinez, but this was way more engaging than your budget pie charts.)
The Mirror Cracked
The story itself? Classic Ferrante. We're in Naples—divided between the high-class intellectuals and the "vulgar" industrial side. Giovanna is stuck in the middle, trying to figure out if she's a monster or just a girl.
It reminds me of what we try to teach with Great Expectations—that painful process of realizing the adults in your life are just flawed, messy people who lie to themselves. Ferrante nailed that same brutal honesty in My Brilliant Friend, though that one had more forward momentum. The prose is dense. It's internal. Ferrante spends pages on a single feeling, dissecting it until there's nothing left.
Does it drag? Sometimes. Around the six-hour mark, I felt like we were circling the same emotional drain. Story of a New Name had those same slow spirals, but somehow I never minded them as much. I definitely zoned out during a walk along the lake and had to rewind 15 minutes. But that's the nature of this kind of book. It's not a plot-heavy thriller; it's a character study with teeth.
Who's Getting an A, Who's Getting Excused
If you're one of my students who thinks The Old Man and the Sea is "too slow," you're going to hate this. It requires patience, and you have to be okay with a narrator who yells at you sometimes. Skip it if you need plot momentum to stay engaged.
But if you love language, and you love watching a character get dismantled and put back together? It's worth the credit.
Bell's About to Ring
I finished it in three days, mostly while pretending to listen to other people. (Don't tell my department head.)
It's messy, loud, and uncomfortable. Just like growing up.
