The Story of a New Name

I am so happy that I have had this wonderful series by Elena Ferrante recommended to me. I just finished "The Story of a New Name" after reading "My Brilliant Friend" and am feeling that wonderful euphoria that only a real lover of literature feels when there are two more books to look forward to that will continue my enchanting experience with these expertly drawn characters. I have hit a bit of a dry spell lately in my reading and feel like I have discovered a spectacular secluded beach with a sparkling azure sea surrounded by a forest of Redwood trees among a tired old smelly city full of toxic odors and blighted buildings. These books have added an exponential lovely aura to my early summer days and the fact that I have two to still read is just such a comforting feeling. In these times when there seems to be nothing new under the literary sun I am so pleased that I have found Elena Ferrante. The characters in this story are so expertly drawn that they stay with me all day long after I have closed the book for a few hours. This is really something of a soap opera drawn against the backdrop of post WW2 Naples, Italy. "The neighborhood" with all of it's many inhabitants become a character all to it's self. The class struggle among the political and social turbulence wrap themselves around these young girls who have a friendship that is the heart of the story. Poverty, class differences, and blight come alive to carry the love lives and personal crisis' along on the putrid smelling wind of the landscape. The story begins in 1950's Naples....but it could really be in any time and in any place. The foundation of the narrative is how omnipotent class, money, and social standing are in who we will all eventually become. I grew up in a tired little industrial town in Southern California in the same time period. The situation was identical. Young people, girls especially it seems, are totally at the mercy of the families that they are born into. Poverty is bone crushing. When education is not important to parents their children suffer horribly. Yet, if they have not been exposed to rising above poor and oppressive circumstances themselves, they are predestined to raise their children in the same depressing mode. Violence is the foundation of many of these homes. Large families stuffed into tiny and squalid dwellings filled with cigarette smoke, cheap food, alcoholism, violence, and always pervasive misery. How to escape? Young girls literally radiate towards men who are violent because that is all they know. This is the crux of Ferrante's brilliant narrative. Her protagonists Lila and Lennucia choose different paths....mainly because of Linnucia's father's willingness to pay the small fee for her to continue into middle school while Lila's shoemaker father didn't believe in educating his girl child. Lila is beautiful and a man magnet....this is her "way out". So the tale is a universal one. It happens every day and everywhere. This is such a fascinating fact of life and Elena Ferrante weaves her narrative with so much honesty and brutal reality that the reader is spellbound with the facts of what is nothing more than the universal truth of life. All over the world it is the same. Give yourself the gift of the Neapolitan Series this summer. It is actually very relevant to the current presidential race in the USA and the current brexit situation. Globalism and classism and how they affect young lives are the themes of these wonderful books. Since the best seller list is looking rather bleak this summer...I cannot recommend this reading experience more enthusiastically. This is a GIFT....don't miss it.

I'm fully engaged in this series, and I'll read them all. This is number 2 of 4. I'm now on number 3. I'm so engaged I don't have the distance to say if they are brilliantly written -- it is not writing that draws attention to itself, which can be a very good thing. But the main reason one doesn't notice the craft is that the characters and the evocation of a place (the poor end of Naples) and an era (50s-60s so far) are wonderful. The two main characters, poor girls who grow up to very different fates, are heart rending, lovable, infuriating, insightful and obtuse, admirable and badly-behaved: like real people. The supporting cast -- the kids from the neighbourhood with limited horizons and prospects, the parents generation that suffered in the War and struggles to get by, the petit (and not so petit) intelligentsia that the narrator encounters as she gradually escapes the neighbourhood's gravity -- are a world of real life. The book has a feminist sensibility -- in what and how it observes -- without being "about" feminism or gender inequality per se. I'd highly recommend the series to any reader.

The Story of a New Name is the second in Elena Ferrante's highly-praised Neapolitan Quartet. In it, we again meet the two friends. Lila and Elena, both born in August 1944 and now in their late teens and early twenties. By the end of the first book, My Brilliant Friend, teenaged Lila was already married to the wealthy grocer Stefano. Their marriage had continued the neighborhood pattern of rape and beatings. The "brilliant" Lila, who, like Elena, had longed for a different kind of life away from the impoverished neighborhood where they grew up, had escaped the poverty of her childhood in her marriage to Stefano, but she couldn't escape the culture of male domination and physical abuse. That was simply the accepted way of the world. It was inevitable that the spirited Lila would eventually rebel and seek more from life. The only surprising thing about that was where and from whom she sought that "more." Elena, meanwhile, with the help and encouragement of her teachers and her own hard work, as well as a little bit of luck, continued her progress through the educational system. She escaped the trap of an early marriage and managed to continue to college, which opened up a whole new world to her. The story of Elena's first trip away from her neighborhood to go to the college at Pisa brought back some vivid memories for me. I could relate very well to the apprehension and anxiety of a girl who had lived all her life in an insular neighborhood as she struggled to find her way and her place in this new world she had entered. Been there. Done that. Got the tee shirt. This really is, in so many ways, a heartbreaking story. The barriers that life throws up for these two young women must seem almost unreal to younger women readers living in Western societies today, but their older mothers, aunts, grandmothers can testify that the barriers really did exist and, in all too many instances, still do, even if in modified form. Elena continues to be the narrator of this story, but her narration is informed by some notebooks of Lila's. Lila had given them to her and pressed her to keep them - but not read them - so that Stefano would not find them. They were notebooks containing her writing about her feelings and experiences from the time of childhood right up through her marriage. Of course, Elena could not resist the temptation of reading them, and so she is able to tell us what Lila was feeling concerning many of the events of both their lives. The two young women had always been competitive, especially about school, but, as they reach adulthood, they also become competitive about men. They are attracted to the same young man, although Elena denies her attraction. This attraction will have important consequences for their friendship and for their lives. Throughout these years, the friendship undergoes repeated trials. The lives of the two have diverged in very significant ways and, at times, they are emotionally distant as well as physically distant from each other. But always something brings them back together. I loved this book. I thought it was even better than My Brilliant Friend. From the very first page of The Story of a New Name I was mesmerized. I would have liked to read the entire book in one sitting, but, unfortunately, life intervened. I had work to do, places to go, appointments to keep, but I always returned to it as soon as I could, because I just couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen next. My only real problem with the book was one of the same ones I had with the first entry, namely trying to keep the cast of thousands straight! All those confusing names and all those families and their interrelationships. Had the author not again included that index of characters at the beginning as a handy reference, I might have been irretrievably lost. As it is, I now feel that I know and understand Lila and Elena. The drama of their lives seems so real, so well-written, and so engrossing that one can't help feeling that it must be based upon real life. The author herself is something of a mystery, but she grew up in Naples and it seems likely that she experienced or observed events similar to the ones that she describes in her books. Or maybe she just has a really vivid imagination.

I've just finished this second book in the trilogy. What a wonderful read. Ferrante has captured the raw emotions of a Naples neighborhood populated by working class people fighting for money, love, respect, and most often fighting with each other. Their lives are circumscribed by tradition and more doors close on these Neapolitans than open for them. Opportunity is rare and of the two brilliant friends, only one will succeed in getting a higher education. Elena will surpass her best friend Lila by gaining an impressed teacher's mentorship and going to high school and then college. But the bittersweet affection and competition that marks their friendship will continue despite their different life pathways. These dual traits are as recognizable in turbulent Naples or cosmopolitan New York. Today we talk about toxic friendships. But this female bond unit is loyal, hurtful, and as competitive as the Williams sisters on a tennis court. Lila defines herself by co-opting the knowledge accrued by her friends and eventually her husband, whom she married for money and status by the age of sixteen. Many suitors' hearts break when this marriage occurs, but the bride's heart turns stone cold when she sees an avowed enemy wearing shoes she made years ago to the wedding reception. These were shoes bought by her fiancé and destined to be saved. Lila will never forgive this betrayal and takes revenge on her new husband by withholding her love. Their wedding night becomes an assault and the physical violence she suffers becomes a way of life. While Lila lives a life of drama and danger, Elena moves toward intellectual fulfillment in Pisa and romance tinged by respect. The second book ends with Lila out of the marriage and Naples, but enslaved in a degrading job in a sausage factory. She has hit bottom while her childhood friend and alter ego Elena continues to soar.

This is the continuing story of Elena Greco and her intriguing friend, Lila Cerullo. Lila is now married--very unhappily so--and Elena (Lenu, as she is called) narrates both Lila's tale and her own story of maturation. Elena has excelled academically and has received a full-ride scholarship in Pisa. Lila, back home in Naples, flounders dysfunctionally in an effort to individuate herself. I love these books and I find Ferrante's writing to be stimulating and evocative. I am of course waiting for book number three in this trilogy. I do want to note that her characters are very much flawed. Ferrante's portrayal of them is consistently sympathetic, although like all good authors she leads us down a path to occasional shock and revulsion. Lila is eminently self-destructive -- a fascinating personality to be sure, and I think all ardent readers of this trilogy hope for her redemption. Elena, on the other hand, is a much more stable personality, although her fascination with Lila sometimes leads me to internally exclaim, "Sheesh, get a life!" I do appreciate Elena's retrospective calm as she assesses with great candor how Lila's misfortunes and neediness often lifted her (Elena) up and fed her ego. I think that is what I appreciate the most about this series -- the depth of personal insight.

I barreled into this book and sailed through the first 200 pages, but then it flagged for me in the middle, picking up again in the last 150 pages - but that may just have been because the end was near! I was so torn about this book. On the negative side, all of the characters are detestable human beings. All of them are awful in their own way and it just becomes a question of degrees. The people in the "neighbourhood" are not people I would want to spend time with. Maybe day-to-day they are perfectly pleasant, ordinary people, but in the story of their lives as recounted by Lenu they are deficient in character and action. There is violence, selfishness and base motivations - money and sex primarily. No one looks good in this story. And if they do, it's not for long. Even though Lenu is the narrator, this is Lila's story. Lila may be fragile and broken in ways that no one can truly understand, least of all Lila herself, but she is still a horrible human being. She is a terrible wife, she is an even more terrible friend. She is manipulative and selfish and capricious. If she was my friend I would break up with her. But the friendship is complex and the codependency of the two friends is the meat of the story and there is a lot of juice there to keep you in there with them. They are also still very young and in addition to their major character defects there is a layer of immaturity that can be missed because so much has happened in their lives. They are both completely unaware and totally, starkly aware of all that they don't yet know and perhaps can never know. On the positive side, Ferrante draws these human failings so well. She draws a community mired in all this awful human weakness that was born in poverty, that cannot seem to extricate itself even as they become more affluent. She writes with recognition and surety of the human condition and it is a wonder to read. Also on the positive side, I liked very much where Ferrante is taking Elena. She is growing and changing and I liked particularly her observations on how hard it is move into another class. Elena may be educated and have a degree, but she recognizes that she will never belong in the class that she aspires too. Those scenes where she sees clearly and yet still feels the pull of the neighbourhood are poignant. Elena is the least horrible of the characters, but she also has the advantage of being the narrator. I liked that Lila's position is such a stark commentary on the position of women in Italy in the 1960's and that Elena's juxtaposes that and pulls against it as she tries to gain her independence in work, socially and sexually. It mirrors their friendship in a lot of ways. The book is masterful on so many levels. The themes of poverty and friendship continue to dominate, but are now interwoven with those of social change and social mobility. But, ugh! They are so hard to be around! They are fascinating and complicated and there is so much to chew on, but they are awful and annoying at the same time. The people in this story are a train wreck that you want to turn away from with discomfort because there is nothing you can do for them and it is so embarrassing for them to have you see, but you rubberneck anyway because you want to know if anyone is going to make it out alive. I will probably return to Elena and Lila for the third book, but I think I need a little break from them. A solid 3.5 stars reaching for 4.

I loved the first book, My Brilliant Friend, and didn't believe it could get better, but it does! The drama of the two teen-age girls is more painful, more heartbreaking, and perhaps hard for some to take. But their strength and beauty shines through, and we get to learn more about the history of post WWII Italy. Some of this may be difficult to follow for those who are unfamiliar with Italian political and intellectual life. But if you've read some Gramsci, you'll eat it up. It also deals with issues that are virtually universal among young women growing up all over the world. The book deals with frankly and insightfully with the challenges that teenage girls face as they grow into women, sexual, intellectual and political. It's feminist writing that doesn't wave any banners or slogans or propose any easy answers; it presents us face to face with the real challenges. Finally, I think Lila is one of the greatest heroines I have ever encountered, I love her every step of the way. It's all so personal and heart-felt, it's hard not to believe that much of it is based on the anonymous writer's own life. After all, the narrator is named Elena, and becomes a writer. But don't let the hype over the author's identity distract you: read these wonderful books for their own merits.

I read all 4 of these Neopolitan Novels. You know, these books received so much hype and I wanted to love them for a lot of reasons, one being that my ancestors came from Campania. There was something to like in the novels, an intermittent breakthough of some lyrical writing, a few insights into human nature, and a lot about Naples that I truly enjoyed. There was however, much that drove me nuts! The narrator, Elena, analyzes every nuance of life and feelings to DEATH, over and over again. She second guesses herself constantly, until I got a headache. I couldn't for the life of me understand her fascination with this childhood friend, Lela, who is never anything but mean to her. Her character is so undeveloped and one demensional. The books are so repetitive, unabashedly telling the same story over and over. Surprising that I read all 4. I kept wanting to see where in the hell this was going. Was it going to get better. Would I somehow get why it was touted as so great? It gripped me like a bad soap opera can grip you. I wanted to know what was going to happen, though I was pretty certain I knew.