Hello out there (or in there),
I hope that wherever you are, all is as well as possible with you and your families.
My apologies for the long silence from The Phraser. My excuse is that I’m trying to write a novel. When I set off with this grand, novel-writing plan, I did not realise how difficult it would be. There has been some progress, but I’m still not sure in which direction.
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Bridges over the Arno River, Florence – September 2020
I did not think this trip would happen.
A weekend in Italy? A wedding in a country brought to its knees in agony by Covid-19 only months earlier? Surely not.
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
This book, the third in the series, has an ache in it that grows as the story lengthens. It is about the absence of love and belonging, and the complications of motherhood.
The themes belong to us all and Ferrante intensifies them against the backdrop of Naples. She paints her story with the city’s colours, chosen for their truth from a palette that other cities struggle to match.
The Phraser 