Soon to be an HBO series, the follow-up to My Brilliant Friend in the New York Times bestselling Neapolitan quartet about two friends growing up in post-war Italy is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted family epic by Italy’s most beloved and acclaimed writer, Elena Ferrante, “one of the great novelists of our time.” (Roxana Robinson, The New York Times)In The Story of a New Name, Lila has … Story of a New Name, Lila has recently married and made her enterée into the family business; Elena, meanwhile, continues her studies and her exploration of the world beyond the neighborhood that she so often finds stifling. Love, jealousy, family, freedom, commitment, and above all friendship: these are signs under which both women live out this phase in their stories. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila, and the pressure to excel is at times too much for Elena. Yet the two young women share a complex and evolving bond that is central to their emotional lives and is a source of strength in the face of life’s challenges. In these Neapolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante, the acclaimed author of The Days of Abandonment, gives readers a poignant and universal story about friendship and belonging.
Ferrante is one of the world’s great storytellers. With the Neapolitan quartet she has given her readers an abundant, generous, and masterfully plotted page-turner that is also a stylish work of literary fiction destined to delight readers for many generations to come.
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I struggle not giving this book 5-stars. I say that because I’m emotionally into this story. I was up all night reading and didn’t close my eyes until the sun was good and up. Someone else reviewed that three-quarters into the story she was done. So was I but it had more to do with losing interest in Lina/Lila. She felt to be the embodiment of the mean, stagnate and abusive neighborhood they grew up in. She had betrayed Lenu in the worst way and suddenly my interest in reading this series had changed. I was done with Lina and am now reading to see if Lenu finds a better version of herself to believe in and become. And so, to me, Lina is an unapologetic and abusive friend. Lenu is extremely co-dependent. Okay, those are the elements of drama a story needs, HOWEVER, I can’t bring myself to care about Lina and her ex-husband, boyfriends, brother and his attachments. I’m done with the old neighborhood, and I’m sure that was the deliberate effect the author wanted to inspire. Only in my extreme nature, I find myself skipping through all the parts that involved Lina after the betrayal. I think that’s why a lot of readers are finding it difficult to continue. It’s like after that, all the parts about Lina are tedious. It’s as if I’m reading “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…” And as a writer myself, I’m not sure how to feel about that. I’m disappointed in myself while praising the brilliance of the author for making me feel that way. However, I will finish this series and hopefully, Lina will arc. But I am GREATLY invested in Lenu’s arc. I’m hoping she’ll fall in love with herself and gain a voice and some self-esteem, it seems the story is going in that direction.
Fabulous series of books, an in-depth story of the life long relationship between two woman and the world they lived in in Naples and Italy.
Elena Ferrante has given us a nuanced, incisive view of 1960s life in Naples, Italy, with poignant insights in this second volume of her series into the limited life options available to women and the expansive opportunities education provides. Best of all is the inimitable Lila, who springs to life on the page to hold us enthralled with the sheer force of her intelligence, strength, and unpredictable nature. I was up until the wee hours reading this book, and you will be, too!
An excellent source book for women’s studies and sociological patterns.
Intelligent. Insightful. Thought Provoking.
Elena Ferrante will be remembered as one of the greatest novelists of all time.
Reviewing a book without giving away too much is always a challenge. Set in the outskirts of Naples, Italy in the 1960s—a place beset by poverty, domestic violence, and male domination— Lenu, our narrator, and Lila, her best friend, are now sixteen and seventeen years old. Their conflicted but dependent relationship continues—supportive/competitive, admiring/contemptuous.
The girls’ lives have taken a more divergent path. Lenu earns her college degree on a full scholarship, is greatly admired and respected, and has published her first book. She has a number of unsatisfactory but convenient relationships with men but continues to pine for Nino. Lenu is still secretive about her sexuality and still has not learned to share her true feelings. Lila is the mother of a small boy. Her marriage is in a shambles with her shrewish, destructive, self-centered, combative, blatantly sexual nature, i.e., sexual with everyone except her husband. With a ruined reputation, still, there are no shortage of men to pick up Lila’s pieces.
Lenu is once more forced to question Lila’s motives when Lila’s decisions put her at odds with Lenu’s deepest, but still carefully hidden, desires.
Some thought-provoking images:
Lina refers to her wedding ring, ” …what is this gold circle, this glittering zero I’ve stuck my finger …”
Lenu is complimented by Armando, Professor Galiani’s son and the rare center of attention when she attends a party with Lila at the professor’s home, ” He was absolutely the first person to show me in a practical sense how comfortable it is to arrive in a strange, potentially hostile environment, and discover that you have been preceded by your reputation, that you don’t have to do anything to be accepted, that your name is known, that everyone knows about you, and it’s the others, the strangers, who must strive to win your favor and not you theirs.”
After the party, Armando shows a romantic interest in Lenu, but her confidence has eroded, “I was pleased because he obviously liked me, and I was polite, but not available. Lila’s words had indeed done damage. My clothes were wrong, my hair was wrong, my tone of voice was false, I was ignorant…”
After Lenu has broken Antonio’s heart, his sister, Ada, captures the truth as she tells Lenu, “You have no feelings, just look how you treated my brother.” I reminded her with an angry snap that it was her brother who had left me, and she replied, “Yes, anyone who believes that is lucky: there are people who leave and people who know how to be left.”
An amazing character study, we witness the push and pull of everyday life, some more obvious than others, as characters attempt to jockey into position to realize their desired end result, some successful, some always behind the eight ball. Why? Because there’s always another bigger, badder character without scruples or loyalty, who will stop at nothing to attain what they want, and to keep everyone else from getting theirs. One- upmanship always at work.
Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym for an author who wishes to remain invisible. As a matter of fact, writing is not her full-time job. She writes these wonderful books in her spare time—when she’s not at her day job. Is she even really a woman? No one knows. In any event, her Neapolitan Novels series contains four books: My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child. My Brilliant Friend has already aired on HBO. Although I do not know the time frame, books two and three are scheduled to be made into mini-series to give us closure on Lenu and Lila’s story.Hopefully, the fourth book will be added to this series. I look forward to reading and reviewing the next two books.
Ciao bella!
I fell in love with these characters from book one and couldn’t get enough through book 4. The author tells her story in a way that makes you feel like you are in it, experiencing life along side Lenu and Lina.