Day: January 3, 2022

Movie adaptation: ‘The Lost Daughter’ by Elena Ferrante

The movie adaptation of ‘The Lost Daughter’ by Elena Ferrante is now playing in theaters everywhere. Photo: amazon

Elena Ferrante is the author of seven novels, including four New York Times bestsellers; “The Beach at Night,” an illustrated book for children; and “Frantumaglia,” a collection of letters, literary essays, and interviews. Her fiction has been translated into over forty languages and been shortlisted for the MAN Booker International Prize. In 2016 she was named one of TIME’s most influential people of the year and The New York Times has described her as “one of the great novelists of our time.” Her book “The Lost Daughter” has been adapted into a major motion picture directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and starring Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, Paul Mescal, and Peter Sarsgaard. (amazon, 2022)

“The Lost Daughter” – Leda, a middle-aged divorcée, is alone for the first time in years after her two adult daughters leave home to live with their father in Toronto. Enjoying an unexpected sense of liberty, she heads to the Ionian coast for a vacation. But she soon finds herself intrigued by Nina, a young mother on the beach, eventually striking up a conversation with her. After Nina confides a dark secret, one seemingly trivial occurrence leads to events that could destroy Nina’s family in this “arresting” novel by the author of the New York Times–bestselling Neapolitan Novels, which have sold millions of copies.

New book release: ‘Made in Louisiana: The Story of the Acadian Accordion’ by Marc Savoy

In his new book, Marc Savoy shares the fascinating story of Cajun Music’s iconic instrument. Photo: amazon

Born in 1940, Marc Savoy grew up in a rural French-speaking community outside of Eunice, Louisiana, and started playing the accordion at age twelve. By age twenty, he was building and selling his own Acadian-brand Cajun accordions. In 1966, he opened the doors to the iconic Savoy Music Center in his hometown. Today, he is revered as one of the finest builders and players of the instrument in the world. His new book “Made in Louisiana: The Story of the Acadian Accordion” is the story of how an instrument once known as the “German-style” accordion became the iconic image of Louisiana’s Cajun culture. (Marc Savoy, 2021)

Most strands of American music have an iconic instrument. Horns for jazz, banjos for bluegrass, and electric guitars for rock and roll, but few invoke the immediate recognition as the accordion found in the wildly unique music of Louisiana Cajuns. Few know the instrument as intimately as world-renowned accordion player, builder, and author, Marc Savoy. Upon seeing a Louisiana-handmade diatonic accordion for the first time in 1957, a teenage Marc Savoy began a quest that arguably no one has come closer to achieving: to build the perfect Cajun accordion. Told in Savoy’s own words, “Made in Louisiana” is the story of the evolution of his Acadian brand accordions—from being a young prodigy to a self-made businessman to a music store owner to a definitive figure in Cajun music.