The Psychic Toll of Class Mobility

In 2018, scholars at the University of Padua examined the work of various writers from the same region as the celebrated author published under the pen name Elena Ferrante—hoping to determine, once and for all, her true identity. Comparing their lexicon and syntax, the researchers found the most striking overlap between Ferrante’s sentences and those of the prolific Naples-born novelist Domenico Starnone. Though the study acknowledges that “it is difficult to precisely define his role,” it concludes that “there is a good chance that Domenico Starnone knows ‘who is,’ or rather, ‘what is’ Elena Ferrante.” (Starnone has denied that he is the author behind Ferrante’s books.)

I prefer to leave the is rewarding on its own terms. Starnone is a writer exquisitely attuned to class anxieties: As his later novels do, explores the emotional cost of class mobility, and the psychic toll of changing one’s speech patterns and behavior for the sake of social and financial gain.