Happily loitering about London, c. 1949, with the intent of gathering material for her writing, Fleur Talbot finds a job ?on the grubby edge of the literary world? at the very peculiar Autobiographical Association. Mad egomaniacs writing their memoirs in advance ? or poor fools ensnared by a blackmailer? When the association?s pompous director steals Fleur?s manuscript, fiction begins to appropriate life.

After twelve-year-old Natalie writes a wonderful novel, her friend Zoe helps her devise a scheme to get it accepted at the publishing house where Natalie's mother works as an editor.

An award-winning author guides readers through the writing process, and includes examples from his own works, outlines for writing fiction and nonfiction, and excerpted pages from the author's writing notebooks.

"Here, in these four crisp essays on writing and reading by the internationally bestselling author of My Brilliant Friend and The Lying Life of Adults, Ferrante offers a rare look at the origins of her literary powers. She writes about her influences, her struggles, and her formation as both a reader and a writer; she describes the perils of "bad language" and suggests ways in which it has long excluded women's truth; she proposes a choral fusion...