I'd been hearing about Elena Ferrante for a couple of years before I finally picked up the first novel in her Neapolitan series, My Brilliant Friend. I never would have read it if not for the repeated urging of my friend Steven - we usually love the same books so when I had the chance to get a copy of the book with a gift certificate from my neighborhood indie bookstore, I bought it. And then I let it sit on my 3 foot tall book stack for a few weeks before I tucked it into my bag on my way into work.

Fast forward a week and I've finished the book - after days of returning late from my lunch breaks, a week of sitting in cafes reading instead of writing.

To say My Brilliant Friend is good is an understatement. It is, on the surface, the story of two girls growing up together in Naples in the 1950s/60s. It is a novel about friendships and family and breaking out of traditional roles. But beneath it all there is a simmering, occasionally explosive tension that pervades everything. The simplest moments are so electrically charged - as a reader I was on fight or flight alert throughout the whole book.

The second and third books in the series - The Story of a New Name, and Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay - Are equally as engaging and Ferrante manages to maintain (if not amp up) the tension and underlying anger and frustration that Lenu and Lila endure throughout the series.

Ferrante uses the passage of time in unique ways. She also wrangles an enormous cast of characters and keeps them all relevant throughout the novels.

So who is Elena Ferrante? Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym for the Italian writer. She is a mystery- someone with no public presence, no author photos on her books, someone who inspires readers and reviewers to ask the difficult questions. Is Ferrante even really a woman? Is she an amalgam of any number of other authors? What clues lie in her work to direct us to her true identity?

I don't mind not knowing. I do mind that the fourth and last novel in the series is not due out until September.

Until then, I'll do my best to convert others to the cult of Ferrante, and I'll ration the last couple Ferrante books I haven't read yet and be first in line in September to buy her book.