The Neapolitan Novels

Like millions of others, I found Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and and Those Who Stay, The Story of the Lost Child) to be fully absorbing and addicting – I don’t say riveting, as many times I alternated between can’t put it down and can’t keep reading. The four books comprise a single, long story of the lifelong, deep and conflicted relationship between two girls, Elena (or Lenù), the narrator, and Rafaella (Lila).  The girls grow up in a poor and violent neighborhood of Naples, from the 1950’s to 2014  – the pervasive violence is not always due to the activities of the camorra, the “secret” crime syndicate that was widespread in Campania, but is embedded in the families and neighborhoods, and especially in the relationships between men and women. 

I was angry.  I said, “You want to use me to con them?”

She understood that she had offended me.  She squeezed my hand hard. “I didn’t intend to say something unkind.  I meant only that you are good at making yourself liked.  The difference between you and me, always, has been that people are afraid of me and not of you.”

“Maybe because you’re mean,” I said, even angrier.

“Maybe,” she said, and I saw that I had hurt her as she had hurt me.  Then, repenting, I added immediately, to make up: “Antonio would get himself killed for you: he said to thank you for giving his sister a job.”

“It’s Stefano who gave the job to Ada,” she replied. “I’m mean.”

The relationship between Lenù and Lila is synergistic – on her own, Lenù is book-smart, but a striver, who says she is only fully alive and most creative when working with, or stimulated by Lila.  In contrast, Lila is strong, exceptionally creative and fiercely independent, but seems to seek and need the validation of her accomplished friend.  And their lives and friendship are framed in the books within the larger currents of Italian political and social life, which are fully and grippingly explored.  Still, there are key events in the books whose meaning and significance I cannot quite grasp but which remain in my mind long after closing the books.  Fascinating books!

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