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Malafemmena
Louisa Ermelino's stories follow women living dangerously at home and abroad, whether in Italian-American neighborhoods or in the countries—India, Turkey, Afghanistan—where they seek escape. At home, they break ancient Italian taboos and fall victim to mobsters. Overseas, they smoke opium-laced hashish and sleep with strange men. Ermelino's voice is boisterous and endearingly blunt.
“There is lyricism in the language of Ms. Ermelino’s splendid collection that lulls us, line after seductive line, from the mundane to the menacing. Malafemmena is the work of a bold and original writer.”
—Gay Talese
"Written with generosity, curiosity, and a great deal of sharp wit.... Will speak to anyone who's found themselves gloriously stranded in a foreign land...or bemused by the strange rituals of their own tribe."
—Hanya Yanagihara
“What Louisa Ermelino knows about the heart could fill a book and has. The unadorned authenticity of her prose is so powerful, it gave me whiplash. I read Malafemmena in one sitting and wanted more, more, more. The writer's a genius, or an alchemist, or maybe both.”
—Patricia Volk, author of Stuffed and Shocked
“Louisa Ermelino is a gorgeous writer and master storyteller. Imagine a cross between Maugham and The Sopranos . She captures the madness, comedy, violence, and superstition of domestic life in NYC’s Little Italy, but also takes us all over the world—Jakarta, India, Turkey—where her characters stumble in and out of heartbreak and trouble. This book is irresistible. I loved it.”
—Delia Ephron
Louisa Ermelino is the author of three previous Joey Dee Gets Wise (Kensington, 2004), The Black Madonna (Simon & Schuster, reprint, 2013), and The Sisters Mallone (Simon & Schuster, reprint, 2013). She is Vice President and Reviews Director at Publishers Weekly in New York City.
“There is lyricism in the language of Ms. Ermelino’s splendid collection that lulls us, line after seductive line, from the mundane to the menacing. Malafemmena is the work of a bold and original writer.”
—Gay Talese
"Written with generosity, curiosity, and a great deal of sharp wit.... Will speak to anyone who's found themselves gloriously stranded in a foreign land...or bemused by the strange rituals of their own tribe."
—Hanya Yanagihara
“What Louisa Ermelino knows about the heart could fill a book and has. The unadorned authenticity of her prose is so powerful, it gave me whiplash. I read Malafemmena in one sitting and wanted more, more, more. The writer's a genius, or an alchemist, or maybe both.”
—Patricia Volk, author of Stuffed and Shocked
“Louisa Ermelino is a gorgeous writer and master storyteller. Imagine a cross between Maugham and The Sopranos . She captures the madness, comedy, violence, and superstition of domestic life in NYC’s Little Italy, but also takes us all over the world—Jakarta, India, Turkey—where her characters stumble in and out of heartbreak and trouble. This book is irresistible. I loved it.”
—Delia Ephron
Louisa Ermelino is the author of three previous Joey Dee Gets Wise (Kensington, 2004), The Black Madonna (Simon & Schuster, reprint, 2013), and The Sisters Mallone (Simon & Schuster, reprint, 2013). She is Vice President and Reviews Director at Publishers Weekly in New York City.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
192 pages, Paperback
First published August 9, 2016
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216 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 4, 2017
I wanted to start out this new year/new reading challenge with something good and different, and this collection of darkish tales about "nasty women" was just perfect. Louisa Ermelino writes the kind of stories where you are so tempted to unintentionally commit a kind of so-called "intentional fallacy" by assuming the author must have led quite the infamous life because otherwise she simply would not have been able to make up these things!
In this slim volume of only 158 pages, you'll experience 16 stories (over half previously published in reputable journals: a good thing, I think, based on too many recent readings of largely mediocre original collections), so no individual story can be very long. This is a testament, then, to the author's skillful economy of prose, as through her deployment of sharp detail, folklorish storytelling flair, and oblique edgy wit, you'll still end up feeling as through you've trekked widely across place and time. All the stories have the feel of modern fairy tales (aided by themes such as childbirth, revenge, abandonment and betrayal, quests) and feature somehow transgressive women, often with a female protagonist of Italian-American and Catholic heritage. Settings vary, but my favorites involve the international drug-fueled hippie wanderings of young women in the 60s and 70s. (I was reminded of Paul Bowles, Michael Ondaatje, and EM Forster.) There are also a number of stories set in and around NYC in the 60s-80s in Italian neighborhoods where mob influence holds sway.
The beauty of this book is worth mentioning: its cover features great design and colors that get better to look at the longer you're with the book, and there are really lovely interior pages thickly embossed with "S" for Sarabande Books, a nonprofit literary press that I'm happy to have discovered through this book and that (as shown by their website) has a bunch of other recent, equally compelling and beautifully designed essay, story, and poetry collections. And, I owe my discovery of Malafemmena itself to Book Riot's wonderful Liberty Hardy, who published an amazing and magnificent list of recommended recent publications from *over 100* indie presses (! - link at the end of this review), partly in response to Roxane Gay's recent exhortation to reading challenge participants to check out some books in this category. (Plus, in general, I think recent events have catalyzed many readers' interest in seeking out and patronizing independent and thoughtful writing and publishing.)
Malafemmena, presumably like other works on Liberty's list, meets my clarion call for the reading and other challenges of 2017: a well-curated collection of exquisitely crafted stories put together with integrity and art and care: reading that truly matters, that is the total opposite of a time-waster. If you can't find this in your library, maybe ask them to buy it - let's keep these much-needed indie voices calling brightly over the next few years!
The fabulous "ICYMI" - indie contributions you must ingest!" - list from the fab Liberty Hardy of Book Riot:
http://bookriot.com/2016/12/19/a-grea...
In this slim volume of only 158 pages, you'll experience 16 stories (over half previously published in reputable journals: a good thing, I think, based on too many recent readings of largely mediocre original collections), so no individual story can be very long. This is a testament, then, to the author's skillful economy of prose, as through her deployment of sharp detail, folklorish storytelling flair, and oblique edgy wit, you'll still end up feeling as through you've trekked widely across place and time. All the stories have the feel of modern fairy tales (aided by themes such as childbirth, revenge, abandonment and betrayal, quests) and feature somehow transgressive women, often with a female protagonist of Italian-American and Catholic heritage. Settings vary, but my favorites involve the international drug-fueled hippie wanderings of young women in the 60s and 70s. (I was reminded of Paul Bowles, Michael Ondaatje, and EM Forster.) There are also a number of stories set in and around NYC in the 60s-80s in Italian neighborhoods where mob influence holds sway.
The beauty of this book is worth mentioning: its cover features great design and colors that get better to look at the longer you're with the book, and there are really lovely interior pages thickly embossed with "S" for Sarabande Books, a nonprofit literary press that I'm happy to have discovered through this book and that (as shown by their website) has a bunch of other recent, equally compelling and beautifully designed essay, story, and poetry collections. And, I owe my discovery of Malafemmena itself to Book Riot's wonderful Liberty Hardy, who published an amazing and magnificent list of recommended recent publications from *over 100* indie presses (! - link at the end of this review), partly in response to Roxane Gay's recent exhortation to reading challenge participants to check out some books in this category. (Plus, in general, I think recent events have catalyzed many readers' interest in seeking out and patronizing independent and thoughtful writing and publishing.)
Malafemmena, presumably like other works on Liberty's list, meets my clarion call for the reading and other challenges of 2017: a well-curated collection of exquisitely crafted stories put together with integrity and art and care: reading that truly matters, that is the total opposite of a time-waster. If you can't find this in your library, maybe ask them to buy it - let's keep these much-needed indie voices calling brightly over the next few years!
The fabulous "ICYMI" - indie contributions you must ingest!" - list from the fab Liberty Hardy of Book Riot:
http://bookriot.com/2016/12/19/a-grea...
September 22, 2016
Louisa Ermelino has written a wonderful collection. Her characters are caught in conventions of almost folkloric intensity but they are, at the same time, in free fall. Even if they know what is expected of them, they are still improvising their modus vivendi on the fly. Ermelino gives us stories of haunted Italo American family life; the travels of suddenly liberated 1970's Americans, drifting, stoned and unmoored, in the Asian subcontinent; a professional woman on the uncertain edges of passion in the middle east,a loving daughter and wife suddenly bereft of mother and spouse. These stories explore the hidden pathways that move us between trust, betrayal and, sometimes, back.
Ermelino has a slightly distant but deeply tender way of negotiating these terrains: Here, for instance, a young woman, Christina, finds herself at a posh party in the mansion of the raddled multi millionaire playboy, Huntington Hartford.
*
"She sat down and Huntington Hartford took her hand in his. He was an old man and Christina felt sorry for him but what could she do? And then he leaned close to her and said, 'Tell me a secret.'
'A secret?'
'Yes, Please.'
'OK,' she said.
'Good,' he said, 'begin,' and he put his head back against the sofa and closed his eyes.
'I was in Greece,' Christina began. 'And I was pregnant with this baby that I never wanted but I was going to have it anyway. I was going to have it and raise it somewhere in Europe with my friend Robin. She had convinced me we could do it... The baby was a secret. No one but Robin and I knew about it....'
'Christina thought he wasn't listening, that he might have fallen asleep or nodded off, but then he said...'
'And this Robin?'
She was my best friend.
'You were lovers?'
Christina poked him in the ribs. 'You only get one secret,'she said"
*
Fortunately for us, Ermelino tells us many secrets.
Ermelino has a slightly distant but deeply tender way of negotiating these terrains: Here, for instance, a young woman, Christina, finds herself at a posh party in the mansion of the raddled multi millionaire playboy, Huntington Hartford.
*
"She sat down and Huntington Hartford took her hand in his. He was an old man and Christina felt sorry for him but what could she do? And then he leaned close to her and said, 'Tell me a secret.'
'A secret?'
'Yes, Please.'
'OK,' she said.
'Good,' he said, 'begin,' and he put his head back against the sofa and closed his eyes.
'I was in Greece,' Christina began. 'And I was pregnant with this baby that I never wanted but I was going to have it anyway. I was going to have it and raise it somewhere in Europe with my friend Robin. She had convinced me we could do it... The baby was a secret. No one but Robin and I knew about it....'
'Christina thought he wasn't listening, that he might have fallen asleep or nodded off, but then he said...'
'And this Robin?'
She was my best friend.
'You were lovers?'
Christina poked him in the ribs. 'You only get one secret,'she said"
*
Fortunately for us, Ermelino tells us many secrets.
April 11, 2019
This collection of stories features so many white, entitled female travelers at their worst. Confirmed that "people behaving badly abroad with no repercussions" is one of least favorite tropes.
June 26, 2017
Exotic stories, filled with women who navigate their own path. Some stories in this 16-story collection are set in and around New York, a few are set in Italy and others, in India, Asia and the Middle East. I loved these lush tales filled with drugs, sex and danger, as young hippies roamed a more hospitable world in the late 1960's. I found Ermelino's Afghanistan stories particularly fascinating.
June 15, 2017
A book about "bad girls," or in my opinion, "cool girls," that varies from Italian-American neighborhoods near NYC to characters wandering around the middle East and Europe. The girls featured in this collection feel almost untouchable, and perhaps they are. I would've liked to see more flaws come out in these women, or at least a reveal of more motivation, rather than just an outsider's perspective that doesn't seem to change or reveal anything new about the girls as the story progresses. But either way, I'm definitely all about the idea of a secondary female character controlling the narrator's journey, which is what ties almost all of these stories together!
This was a 3-star for me, but the stories set in the suburbs of New York and Long Island were so good, I have to give another star just for those! They struck something with me, and felt very personal and idiosyncratic.
This was a 3-star for me, but the stories set in the suburbs of New York and Long Island were so good, I have to give another star just for those! They struck something with me, and felt very personal and idiosyncratic.
April 6, 2019
I had no clue what I was getting into picking up this book. A beautiful collection of dark short stories, many of them revolving around Italian-American life. But all of them are about women who have a touch of wickedness in themselves.
August 29, 2020
A series of short stories, all with a women as the main character. Most of the stories are very dark, and often end without resolution to the story line. The author is an excellent writer, but this just wasn't my cup of tea.
January 4, 2025
Mostly stories about privileged girls, mostly redheads for some reason, traveling the world and doing whatever they want. Some "shocking" things happen. Lots of talk of wise guys and other Italian "stuff". I spared myself from the remaining two stories.
March 12, 2018
I am a big fan of Louisa ermelino’s novels but this did not do it for me.
February 22, 2019
An interesting collection of short stories about women, often dark and disturbing, and taking place in locations like India and Afghanistan, and New York City. 8.25/10.
November 14, 2016
Malafemma is a Feminist work about seduction. Ermelino knows that any woman who has dimension and substance must be transgressive. She knows this goes deep into her and other cultural roots, as well looking into the future. I love it.
September 1, 2016
Pretty excellent collection of gritty short stories. It's full of dark settings with down and out people doing sketchy things. I'll keep it vague. Great right-before-bedtime reading.
September 21, 2016
What a stunning collection--Ermelino proves herself a master of the short story form with these succinct and lush tales.
October 5, 2016
Some wonderfully written stories, some less so, all deeply disturbing and highly fascinating.
September 22, 2022
While some of the short stories were interesting, I didn’t connect with any of them or the characters in them. It felt like most of the stories were lacking in plot, excitement, and relatability.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews