Cassie McCullough

Jacqueline, I want to steal the opportunity from you so that instead of giving a book recommendation, I want to ask you about Eleanor Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, the ones that begin with My Brilliant Friend, because next week on The Book Club, we're talking about Ferrante's new book.

But I know that you've read the Neapolitan novels.

Why?

What or what kept you reading?

So next week we'll be reading the new one, which is called... The Lying Life of Adults.

That's right.

I'm reading it, but just not the front cover, obviously.

And we're also, as a pair, reading The Leopard.

And that, of course, is by Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa.

And every Italian speaker, feel free to wince at my pronunciation.

Well, thank you both for reading with us today.

It's been wonderful to have you along.

Thank you so much, Cassie and Kate.

It's our pleasure.

Jacqueline Kent's latest books are The Memoir Beyond Words, A Year with Kenneth Cook, and Vida, A Woman of Our Time.

Rahul Gayrola is a literary academic at Murdoch University in Western Australia, whose books include Homelandings, Postcolonial Diasporas and Transatlantic Belonging, as well as last year's Migration, Gender and Home Economics in Rural North India.

Well, that's it for this week's edition of The Bookshelf.

And as we've already said, don't forget, next week it's book club time.

Start reading your Italian books in translation.

Yeah, get on with it.