“Elena Ferrante makes a brilliant return to familiar territory […] Ferrante acknowledges the atomic power of sexuality, but she sees it not as the focus for our entire lives, [but] as something understood within the frame of an entire life. Sexuality needs to be addressed before her characters can begin to see the magnitude, or often enough the tragic narrowness, of their lives […] The life-giving virtues of affection and friendship interest Ferrante more than sexuality.”
