What I Read: May 2016
After reading My Brilliant Friend in March, I bought myself a first-class ticket on the Elena Ferrante train. Even though I thought My Brilliant Friendwas great, The Story of a New Name, the second novel in the Neapolitan novel cycle, blew me even further away.
The Story of a New Name picks up right where My Brilliant Friend leaves off. Elena and Lila, who are still close friends, deviate even further in their paths — Elena becomes the first in her family to go to college, while Lila gets married as a teenager. Along the way they both experience betrayal, romance and the plights of growing up. The Napoli neighborhood and Italy they live in are swirling with violence and political strife, which nearly parallels what’s going on in their personal lives. Ferrante is so eloquent and writes with such intensity that it’s easy to get sucked into the story, even if it is just about two women.
The cover art suggests that this is a fluffy romance novel, but it’s anything but that. What I enjoy most about reading these books is that Ferrante explores the complexities of female friendship in a compelling way. Elena and Lila are inseparable in spirit but struggle to find separate identities that can coexist, something I came to understand the more I read. The person you love the most is also the one who can hurt you the most, and that idea comes up over and over again throughout the novel. The empathy you feel for both characters is very real, at least in my experience — these women are stuck within traditional gender roles, and trying to deviate from them has real consequences. I already bought the third novel, and can’t wait to crack it open.