What Elena Ferrante’s protagonists taught me about presentations ...and about life
This summer, I devoured all of Elena Ferrante’s books in one breath. I don’t use that expression lightly: I truly read them one after the other, as if I were catching up on a long-lost conversation.
I met Lila and Lenù (My Brilliant Friend), as well as Olga (The Days of Abandonment), Delia (Troubling Love), Leda (The Lost Daughter), and Giovanna (The Lying Life of Adults). Fragile, sharp-edged women, difficult to love at times, yet impossible to ignore.
I often found myself in a strange and powerful state: loving and hating the protagonist at the same time, feeling a sense of belonging and, at the same time, an uncomfortable similarity that almost disgusted me. As if those pages forced me to look in the mirror and see parts of myself I’d rather keep hidden. While reading Ferrante, I occasionally thought about my work, about that suspended moment when a presentation comes alive: when it slides off the slides and meets the audience’s gaze.
You can’t please everyone
Ferrante doesn’t write to please. Her characters are not meant to be universally loved. They’re real, fierce, contradictory. The narrative isn’t linear; it’s often uncomfortable, forcing you to pause, reread, and ask yourself: “Whose side am I on? Do I really understand her? Do I resemble her?”.
The same thing happens in presentations: we often try to create “pleasant,” reassuring, smooth content. But what truly remains is what divides, creates tension, and forces the audience to take a stand.
Think, for example, of Satya Nadella’s first internal presentation as Microsoft CEO. When Nadella took over in 2014, Microsoft was a powerful company, but weighed down by internal rigidity, division rivalries and a culture based on control and internal competition. His first presentation to employees wasn’t meant to reassure or confirm certainties. Nadella urged everyone to “kill the sacred cows,” to question what had always been considered untouchable, and to abandon the closed, rigid mindset of the past. He proposed a growth mindset, open to continuous learning and collaboration, to rebuild a more innovative and adaptive company. Many left that room shaken: some angry, others enthusiastic. But no one remained indifferent. It wasn’t a presentation designed to please, because it was meant to shake people, to make them choose where they stood.
I’ve also learned this idea of not pleasing everyone in my private life. You can’t please everyone, and that’s okay. Better to be authentic than simply pleasant.
Showing the cracks
Lila (My Brilliant Friend) is a living crack. She is brilliant but self-destructive; generous but also capable of cruelty. On every page, there are cracks, fractures and contradictions. You love her and you hate her. These cracks are her strength. They make her real. They give her depth.
In presentations, we often chase perfection: clean slides, smooth flow, perfectly crafted sentences. But a story that is too smooth simply slides away. It’s when we show the crack (a failure, a doubt, a tension) that the audience truly feels involved.
Showing the cracks means telling a project not only through its successes but also through its missteps. Sharing a journey, not just a final result. “That’s how the light gets in,” as Leonard Cohen said. Ferrante confirms this, page after page.
The power of the inner voice
Ferrante’s novels are soaked in inner voices. Lenù’s monologue (My Brilliant Friend), Olga’s obsessive thoughts, Delia’s heavy silences, Leda’s tormented oscillations, Giovanna’s confused rage.
In a presentation, the inner voice isn’t written down. But it exists. It’s our deepest intention, the one that goes beyond the words on the screen. When I speak to an audience, I ask myself: “What is my inner voice in this story? Am I speaking to convince, to share, to thank, to move?”. If we don’t recognise this voice, even the best narrative structure risks feeling empty and mechanical.
Ferrante reminds us that the most interesting conflict isn’t always external: often, it’s inside. The same applies when we present an idea: the audience can sense whether that inner voice is authentic.
The courage to disappear
Another precious lesson from Ferrante: the courage to disappear. Ferrante herself is a mystery, and Lila (My Brilliant Friend), at the end of the tetralogy, chooses to disappear.
When I prepare a presentation for a client or support a speaker, I often say: “It’s not your image that matters. It’s the impact you leave.” Disappearing means putting the message at the centre, not the ego. It means having the courage to leave space for others, to not always control their reactions. It means accepting that, once the presentation is over, the audience will take away only what they need, not necessarily everything we wanted to say.
Writing (and speaking) with urgency
In Ferrante’s books, there’s urgency. Every sentence vibrates: it isn’t there to decorate. It exists to explain, to dig, to hurt, to liberate.
When I talk about slides or storytelling, I often use the word “essential.” But essential doesn’t mean sterile minimalism. It means keeping only what truly vibrates. Like Ferrante, who cuts, refines and sculpts until only the truth remains (even if uncomfortable). Every presentation should carry that same urgency: to say only what is necessary, and nothing more.
A summer of books and questions
This summer, among Ferrante’s pages, I found more than just stories. I found an invitation to be braver in my narratives, to dare more, to show my cracks, to write and speak with urgency.
Ferrante’s protagonists taught me that complexity is not a flaw: it’s a gift! That vulnerability is more powerful than perfection. That even a presentation can be a novel: full of contrasts, silences, emotions that are hard to explain.
And now that I’ve finished, I already feel a sense of emptiness. I already miss these protagonists: women you can only love or hate, but who will never leave you indifferent.
What if you approached your next presentation the way Ferrante writes: not trying to please, but to vibrate, to divide, to leave a mark?
This article is part of From Page to Stage: a series exploring how the books we read can shape the way we think, communicate and design stories for the stage of business and life.
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