The Neapolitan Novels, by Elena Ferrante
Part One, My Brilliant Friend, 331 pages
Part Two, The Story of New Name, 471 pages
Part Three, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, 400 pages
Part Four, The Story of the Lost Child, 480 pages
Fast Facts
- This series is dazzling, brilliant, gorgeous, stunning, addictive, thrilling - fill in your chosen adjective for what you ideally want fiction to be
- I read these novels, ~1700 pages in total, in 6 weeks (vacation helped) - I couldn't put them down, but I wish they would have lasted forever
- The author uses a pseudonym and little-to-nothing is known about her because she apparently prefers to let her incredible writing speak for itself
- The overall thread throughout the books follows the friendship of the narrator and her rebellious, unpredictable counterpart, mainly in the poor neighborhood in Naples where they grow up
- Exquisite, a "must" for anyone who has experienced friendship, or who likes Italy and/or Italian food (i.e., everyone)
Female Friendship, or Fight Club? Both, and More.
It is far too simplistic to say that these books are about the complicated friendship between Elena and Lila (whom only Elena calls Lina) as they grow up through girlhood and become wives and mothers.
It is hard to tell even after finishing the books where Elena's story, thoughts, and passions end and Lina's begin. Is this quartet an Italian, feminist Tyler Durden story? If so, can Brad Pitt convince Angelina to play Lina in the movies they are sure to make out of these fascinating books?
With this bit of postmodern mystery, mix in social class struggle, as Elena claws her way from an impoverished childhood to money and fame as a novelist. Add the violence of true mobsters and loan sharks, who you'll also get to know from childhood. Learn about politics in Italy, alongside colorful Communists and Fascists and Socialists, and watch Lina work in a sausage factory and incite protests. Try to keep pace with all the violence, physical and emotional and sexual, and with love affairs and marriages and partners and who has fathered whose children.
Female friendship and blurred lines between characters may be at the foundation of these novels, but Ferrante's work is so multi-layered and packed with rich plot and varied themes that a facile summary of the books as a chronicle of Elena and Lina's friendship doesn't do Ferrante any justice.
Authorial Mystique
Part of the intrigue surrounding these books is related to their virtually unknown author. Elena Ferrante is not her real name. We don't know her name, what she looks like, how old she is, or even definitively whether she is female (although she has referred to herself in a written interview as a mother). She has a one-country, one-interview policy, never in person, and while she does respond to written questions through her publisher, she seems to discuss next to nothing about her personal life, and not a whole lot about the books themselves.
This anonymity or absence seems to have fueled the fire of American interest - Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, linked above, and the New York Times have all written about the brilliance of the books and author, in the same breath as a discussion of her refusal to stand in the spotlight. Most recently, the Times' T Magazine did a piece titled: Who is Elena Ferrante?
Ferrante seems to want her character Elena to do all the talking and self-reflection for her, and the imagined Elena does such a successful job that Ferrante's choice must have been a wise one.
Picking a Favorite Child
It took me a little while to get past some of the bluntness of language, which may have just been culture shock or related to the translation, in the first book. At first it was hard to become engaged with a long list of Neapolitan characters: "the grocer", "the pastry maker", "the shoe maker", "the 32 children", and then to become deeply involved with Lila, who acts like a brat and throws their toy dolls into a sewer.
It wasn't long, however, before I was utterly engrossed in these books. The first covers their childhood, Lenu's first love and struggles to study, and Lina's many suitors and eventual engagement. By the end of "My Brilliant Friend", with the last line in particular, I could appreciate that I was reading a modern classic, and each subsequent book lived up to the last.
If there was any lagging, it was related to the Italian-specific political wranglings and academic debate that Ferrante is clearly very passionate about. My struggle with these sections may have been due to my lack of familiarity with the subject matter.
Regardless, the characters and their stories grew and changed and burned with such fierce brightness that I wasn't bored for longer than 30 seconds.
And as much as I loved their childhood, I also loved Elena's and Lina's adolescence, days of early marriage, their moves and changes of heart, raising children, navigating their lives' highs and lows. This is why I can't pick a favorite of the four, and recommend that if you start this quartet, be prepared to commit to all of them and enjoy every morsel, particularly the satisfying end. They are well worth the time investment.
This anonymity or absence seems to have fueled the fire of American interest - Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, linked above, and the New York Times have all written about the brilliance of the books and author, in the same breath as a discussion of her refusal to stand in the spotlight. Most recently, the Times' T Magazine did a piece titled: Who is Elena Ferrante?
Ferrante seems to want her character Elena to do all the talking and self-reflection for her, and the imagined Elena does such a successful job that Ferrante's choice must have been a wise one.
Picking a Favorite Child
It took me a little while to get past some of the bluntness of language, which may have just been culture shock or related to the translation, in the first book. At first it was hard to become engaged with a long list of Neapolitan characters: "the grocer", "the pastry maker", "the shoe maker", "the 32 children", and then to become deeply involved with Lila, who acts like a brat and throws their toy dolls into a sewer.
It wasn't long, however, before I was utterly engrossed in these books. The first covers their childhood, Lenu's first love and struggles to study, and Lina's many suitors and eventual engagement. By the end of "My Brilliant Friend", with the last line in particular, I could appreciate that I was reading a modern classic, and each subsequent book lived up to the last.
If there was any lagging, it was related to the Italian-specific political wranglings and academic debate that Ferrante is clearly very passionate about. My struggle with these sections may have been due to my lack of familiarity with the subject matter.
Regardless, the characters and their stories grew and changed and burned with such fierce brightness that I wasn't bored for longer than 30 seconds.
And as much as I loved their childhood, I also loved Elena's and Lina's adolescence, days of early marriage, their moves and changes of heart, raising children, navigating their lives' highs and lows. This is why I can't pick a favorite of the four, and recommend that if you start this quartet, be prepared to commit to all of them and enjoy every morsel, particularly the satisfying end. They are well worth the time investment.
