Paper Trail

Elena Ferrante’s new novel; Jia Tolentino gives Brit Bennett a call


Brit Bennett. Photo: Emma Trim

Riverhead Books has started a new online author series called “I’m Glad You Asked.” The first episode allows you to eavesdrop on a phone call between Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror, and Brit Bennett, whose novels include The Mothers and The Vanishing Half, which is due out in June.

The LA Times Book Prizes have been announced.

An archive of Ariana Reines’s inspired project “Rilking”—in which the poet and a number of readers gathered on Zoom to explore the mysterious reaches of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies—is now available online.

Colm Tóibín recommends six of his favorite books.

Publisher’s Weekly reports on Elena Ferrante’s new novel, The Lying Life of Adults, about “an upper-class adolescent from a wealthy left-wing family who lives in the posh heights of Naples. . . .The story spans four years of Giovanna’s life, from ages 12 to 16, as she struggles to determine her identity, including whether she is beautiful or ugly, as her father calls her on the first page of the novel.” Ferrante, the article points out, did not want an image of the protagonist’s face on the book’s cover. “If the girl herself didn’t know how she looked, readers shouldn’t either, the author reasoned.” The novel is scheduled to be published in the US by Europa Books on September 1.