The Story of a New Name

I don’t know why I stopped reading this quartet of novels after the first one, My Brilliant Friend, which I loved.

Maybe it was the hype? A few years later, I finally picked up Book Two of the Neapolitan Novels and could NOT put it down.

The breadth and depth of the world of Naples in the 1960s-70s, the violence, the patriarchy, and the deep and conflicted friendship between Lila and Elena, who need and hate and love each other, is impossible to summarize. In this story, Lila gets married, and Elena pursues her education—but so much more!

Sheer… show more.

The second of Ferrante’s four Neopolitan Novels is a gripping portrayal of the hardships faced by women who grew up in Italy in the 1950s and ‘60s.

The novel is packed with romantic liaisons, incidences of family violence, and the many hurdles that Italian women had to face in forging careers independent of their families. The detailed rendering of a complicated friendship between two women who disappointed each other at times shows how hard women in working-class Naples had to struggle to find their paths.

Being from a big family myself and facing many hurdles before finding my voice, I… show more.