My brief for being in Italy was a strange one. I was there to follow in the footsteps of someone whose identity I didn’t know and didn’t want to know either. There has been a historic fixation on the identity of the Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, who uses a pseudonym. Her My Brilliant Friend series catapulted her to stardom in the English language — an HBO adaptation followed — and in 2016 a journalist (perhaps) unmasked her. The breach of privacy seemed to suggest a sense of ownership, of authors being ours as well as their novels — there was something too about the audacity of a woman publishing fiction on terms she dictated.
I wasn’t in Italy to track Ferrante down. I was trailing what I did know — I wanted to see the terrain of her Neapolitan quartet, which follows protagonist Lenù from childhood, born in Naples in 1944, into middle age, and documents her complicated relationship with her best friend Lila. Specifically, I wanted to see Lenù’s paradise: the island of Ischia, where she holidays for two summers as a teenager.
We landed late in Naples. As I descended the plane steps alongside my boyfriend, the heat rose to meet us. We walked past bar after bar that night, teenagers drinking amid fluorescent lights and sleek facades, but the next morning the shops were shuttered and it was time to travel on.
Lenù’s stay on Ischia was her first taste of another place, and another life. As she departs Naples, she recognises this already: “For the first time I was leaving home . . . The large body of my mother — along with the neighbourhood, and Lila’s troubles — grew distant, and vanished.”
My mother was not there to usher me to the port as Lenù’s harried mum had, but four Italian men were, passing the baton with friendly gestures and shouts to each other. “That’s your boat”, the last of the men said, pointing to the catamaran sitting in wait. The light was early; everything hazed. A woman behind me combed her hair with her fingers as she waited, collecting the excess in her hand. I thought of Lenù waiting for her boat; of the anticipation Ferrante paints. When Lenù admits she has no memory of learning to swim, her mother talks to her as if drowning would be her comeuppance.
We waved the ghost of Lenù’s mother goodbye as we set sail. The wind whipped my hair into an impossible knot as I stood on the deck, watching our surroundings shade into suggestion. Vesuvius loomed on the horizon like a possibility; as if the volcano itself were smoke. It was obvious how Lenù’s trip, though only 20 miles from home, would feel like another world: the air had already changed. There was a slowing down. This was partly the journey — travelling by sea reliably does something , with the mass of waves and breadth of sight jolting or juddering the traveller from where they had mentally and physically been before. But coming from the intensity of a city, this was amplified.
Lenù watches her skin turn olive on Ischia, energised by a pace of life led by whim. It was a sacrifice I was willing to take in the mission of following Ferrante. Arriving on the island, a swim was the first impulse. The sea — cold and fierce — met the challenge. Buffeted by waves, I could see the Castello Aragonese: a medieval castle joined to the island by a stone bridge. Looming down at the water, it was at once undeniable and unbelievable.
Some things weren’t going to be possible — you can’t enter a fictional world and I was never going to leave Ischia anything other than pasty — but it was a perfect task: if you’re in the footsteps of someone, you’re not seeing what they see but instead an approximation, a trace. Ferrante has said before that “Places of the imagination are visited in books . . . Seen in reality they may be hard to recognise”. But I was not looking for My Brilliant Friend nor Lenù, not exactly, what I was looking for was the glint of recognition.
The next morning we set out to see more of the island. After a bureaucratic interlude — the kiosk is closed 27 hours a day; this shop can help you but they’re taking their four-hour lunch break — we acquired bus tickets. We staked out by a stop and not soon but sooner than expected we were sweeping along, past an aqueduct and a fire station, before beginning the winding climb to Fontana, the highest village on the island.
The road swerved towards the heavens; every turn just-about negotiated by the driver. The lushness of the island was everywhere. Fertile hills broke out into vineyards, bunched grapes bordering the road.
In Fontana, we left the bus and followed wooden signs pointing towards Mount Epomeo, a 3km ascent. We had been warned of a tricky, uneven path — Alessandro, the manager of Excelsior Belvedere, our hotel in Ischia’s eponymous main town, had despaired at my sandals. But the climb was manageable, only long and steep and dusty.
As we got closer, the trees ceilinged the path, turning the day to dark. The whole walk, we met only a handful of people. It was hard to believe there would be a restaurant at the summit as we had been promised, let alone with the best bruschetta, as Alessandro had assured. I thought of my mother, who had once sworn there was a sweet shop on a hilltop in the South Downs. I was hungry . . . dehydrated . . . the path became rockier, more improvised. But ahead were wooden steps and an opening which seemed to promise an end.
The final scrabble unlocked a panoramic deck, paper clipped to tables to catch grease, the sea far, far down beyond us. Our only companion was a noble hound with a large and loose jaw and, soon, a waiter. A Campari spritz followed, and then there was the bruschetta. Plump red tomatoes were loaded on crisped, garlicked bread and laced with oil and basil and slices of onion. It was unbelievably delicious.
After the enclosed walk, the totality was overwhelming: bright, sharp, with half the island surveyable. To ascend Mount Epomeo was to enact a Ferrantean what-if. In the second novel of the quartet, the mountain is a promise — the young man Lenù adores proffers it to her. “We’ll meet here tomorrow morning at seven and then climb the mountain,” he suggests. But though tomorrow comes, that climb never does; all its potential — the height of teenage infatuation — is dashed. But I had climbed Epomeo. (What’s more, I had done so with the man I love.)
We hadn’t meant to make our way to Maronti just yet, but sometimes, in the mercy of seeing a bus, you get on the wrong one. As we were spiralling down a hill, with the last two bus tickets that were so difficult to source in the first place stamped and useless, plans arose quickly. We were bearing down, in our looping way, to Barano d’Ischia. From there, we would need only an hour or so to walk by foot to Spiaggia dei Maronti. I had the beach clear in my mind — one that would be made anew once we were there. This was Lenù’s beach. It was where much of her time on Ischia would be spent; where she fell further in love with a man who would ensnare her heart for years to come.
We descended circuitously on foot. Narrow paths were broken up by concrete diversions. It was impossible to see the sea, which I had imagined as a guiding point. But I remembered Ferrante’s words . . . “The trip seemed very long, I met no one coming up or going down” . . . and when we hit that “steep white road”, I knew we were close.
There it was. The long beach, deserted just like Lenù’s. We arrived after the sun had set, with tired feet. Lights along the beach cast glitter across the sea. It was more built up than Ferrante’s Maronti — boat houses, cafés — but all closed and dimmed. The darkness excused the differences. My trip was inevitably charged with how the world, however closely drawn in a novel, cannot be a perfect match for what a reader summons in their mind from words. But I hadn’t figured it might interfere practically.
To get home we needed to reach Sant’Angelo, the peninsula glittering west of us. But the sea acted like a barricade. What I had assumed would be a clear stretch of sand was interrupted by intervals of rock. Squinting my eyes to catch the detail through the half-light, I could make out unsympathetic waves. There was no way of making it by foot.
I had glimpsed a poster for a taxi-boat service as we arrived. Their hours were over but I tried nonetheless. The audio was hampered by the sound of a motor and the wind. “Five minutes”, I heard him say, “double price”.
We walked across the damp sand, shoes in hand, before the thrum of a motor called us to the water. The boat ride prompted a wonder indistinguishably mine and Lenù’s. The sea in the dark has all the velvety magic that clichés tell us of. Inky waves; soft, glimmering movement. It was a dreamlike perspective to glide by that long beach.
Later, I would reread Ferrante and feel as if I had struck upon my own evening. “I made the dark descent”, she writes. “Now the moon was visible amid scattered pale-edged clouds; the evening was very fragrant, and you could hear the hypnotic rhythm of the waves. On the beach I took off my shoes, the sand was cold, a gray-blue light extended as far as the sea and then spread over its tremulous expanse.”
The final day was for reinvention. Ischia is known for its thermal water and mud treatments. Simply put, you are slathered in mud, wrapped in linen and left for a while, before rinsing off in thermal water. The clay was hot and strange on my skin. Lying down, caked and wrapped in the hotel basement, the thoughts buzzed in my head (“am I dead?”) and then slowed. “You’re a butterfly”, the therapist remarked in Italian-decorated English as she rescued me from my shroud. I accepted the upgrade — it was more likely I would be taken for a swamp creature.
Clean again, I felt new. But where was Ferrante? That glint wouldn’t return until the evening. Sitting by the empty Spiaggia di San Pietro, a beach near the port, waving away mosquitoes as we ate pizza from the box, I found her again. It was a romantic night in its honest, as-it-is texture: alone, the sand dark and cool, the waves kicking up a thermal waft. In a few days’ time, submerged back into a life in London complete with drizzle and grey, that moment by the beach would be the one I would summon. Revived in my mind, it would feel not like a memory but a shard of fiction.
Rebecca Watson is assistant arts and books editor at the FT. Her second novel ‘I Will Crash’ will be published by Faber in July. She was a guest of Citalia ( citalia.com ), which offers a four-night trip (one in Naples at the Hotel Palazzo Alabardieri, three at the Excelsior Belvedere Hotel and Spa on Ischia) from £1,295 per person, including return flights from London Gatwick, all transfers and breakfasts
Getting there Naples is the usual starting point for Ischia: the fast hydrofoil leaves from the city’s Beverello port and takes 50 minutes ( alilauro.it and snav.it from €22 each way) — make sure to take in the view looking back at Naples, the sight of Vesuvius is majestic. Caremar ( caremar.it ) runs car ferries on the route, which take about 75 minutes and cost about €65.
Naples airport (a 30-minute drive from the port) has direct flights from numerous European cities, on airlines including EasyJet, Ryanair, Wizz Air and British Airways; direct flights from New York start on April 7 on United and May 25 on Delta.
Where to stay We overnighted in Naples, staying at the Hotel Palazzo Alabardieri ( palazzoalabardieri.it ), a palatial world of marble, mirrors and balconies. Close by, the Pizza 3.0 Ciro Cascella on Via S Pasquale ( cirocascella.it ) offers some of the city’s best pizza (the 3 refers to the types of flour used in the dough). On Ischia, the Excelsior Belvedere hotel ( excelsiorischia.it ) is a 19th-century villa, five minutes’ stroll from the hustle and bustle of the island’s main town, with its own private beach, swimming pool and spa, as well as grounds complete with pomegranate trees. A pianist reliably soundtracks the foyer in the evening. The pedestrianised town of Sant’Angelo on the other side of the island is a chic alternative: Roccobarocco Boutique Hotel ( roccobaroccoboutiquehotel.it ), for example, sits right by the water.
What to do Make sure to climb the Castello Aragonese, a castle on a small volcanic islet connected by causeway to the main island, and with a history dating back to the fifth century BC ( castelloaragoneseischia.com ; entry €12). After touring the castle, have a sunset drink at La Caffetteria del Monastero, in front of the islet’s church of the Immaculate Conception, from where you can survey Ischia and watch the light change on the water.
The Giardini la Mortella botanical garden ( lamortella.org ; entry €12), near the village of Forio, has a vast collection of subtropical and Mediterranean plants. It was created in 1958 by the late Susan Walton, wife of the British composer Sir William Walton, and in summer, symphonic concerts are hosted in the outdoor Greek Theatre every Thursday.
Ischia’s thermal treatments are a must, whether you have mud massaged on to you by a spa therapist or find one of the free hot springs dotted across the island, such as Sorgeto (see visitischia.info ). And the trip won’t be complete without climbing to the highest point of the island: the summit of Mount Epomeo, where the Ristorante La Grotta da Fiore ( epomeolagrotta.com ) will reward your efforts with some of the world’s best bruschetta.
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