Book Four of the Neapolitan novels drops this week amid as much fanfare as can be expected for an author who shuns the spotlight and rarely grants interviews. The whole marketing campaign has provided an interesting counterpoint to the promotion of Jonathon Franzen's new novel Purity, which has been nothing less than a farcical publishing juggernaut.

I gulped down the first two Neapolitan novels very quickly, but I've dragged number three out all summer, in some ways to delay the pleasure and also to make sure it lasted all the way to September, when I knew another Elena Ferrante novel would auto-download on my Kindle. When I'm finally finished with this series I'm going to feel an immense sense of loss, but I'm already looking forward to the luxury and pleasure of taking the time to re-read them