It’s not easy, especially since “the structure of a sentence can be a lot freer” in Italian than in English, she says. Translating can be like lining up unruly toddlers who have their own sense of order. Still, she tries to render it as near to Ferrante’s words as she can. “I tend to stay closer to the text than many of my colleagues,” Goldestein says.
It’s a literal Italian translation from “latrina.”) Ferrante, Goldstein reminds me, has written at length “about how she doesn’t want to have beautiful writing, she wants to tell the truth.” (One funny example from the book: Ferrante writes that when her protagonist unzips a boy’s pants, a “toilet smell” comes out. The author’s new novel, The Lying Life of Adults, tells the story of Giovanna, a teenager whose parents’ marriage crumbles when she begins spending time with her Aunt Vittoria - a wildly passionate woman, estranged from Giovanna’s father after long-ago quarrels, and intent on carving Giovanna in her image.
Here, Goldstein explains some of the sentences that gave her particular trouble.
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