Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante

I'd never heard of Elsa Morante before a good friend recommended WOMAN OF ROME. Not only couldn't I put it down, I've ordered all of Morante's and all of Tuck's books on line. To think I'd never heard of Morante, a woman who lived life purely on her own terms. And what a life! Lily Tuck won the National Book Award and I can see why. Her prose is pitch-perfect, smart, often funny and invariably moving. I loved this book. Elsa Morante is blessed to have Lily Tuck as a biographer. I'd give ELSA MORANTE: WOMAN OF ROME 100 stars if I could.

From start to finish, Lily Tuck brings to this nuanced and dazzling biography of a difficult woman the intuition, the appreciation, the empathy, and the skill of a writer no less gifted than her subject. Both personal and acute, this book resembles no literary biography that has come my way. Like its subject, it will always be a true original.

Lily Tuck captures the fundamentally elusive nature of Elsa Morante. Morante is a difficult subject, not easy to love or understand, but tantalizing all the same, and an important and (in America) overlooked writer. Tuck, with her deft, non-judgmental style, her cosmopolitan detachment, is the perfect biographer. She can love Morante without needing to completely explain or understand her. A terrific job!

I am an English professor and did not really know the work of this writer. The book spurred my interest and now I will find some of Morante's novels and read them. A provocative study of her life and relationships and nicely written.