No Easy Answers

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Back in March I read and reviewed the first of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, 'My Brilliant Friend', giving it somewhat muted praise (3 stars), because, while the story-telling was good, I found the plot somewhat overcrowded, and the style of delivery slightly heavy and monotonous. I therefore approached this, the second in the series, with some wariness.

Perhaps it was the wary approach that worked - low expectations can produce the best surprises! Whatever the reason I - literally - could not put 'The Story of a New Name' down, as the bags under my eyes will testify. The plot-lines raced along, covering the early adult lives of the two main protagonists, Elena and Lila, as one of them struggles in her marriage and the other tries against all odds to pursue her academic studies, while loving a man who does not love her back. Ferrante deploys exactly the same narrative style as she did in 'My Brilliant Friend' - fast and furious - but the scope of the two women's emotional lives deepens so beautifully and compellingly that it was like reading a thriller.

Exactly which of the two main characters is the 'brilliant friend' remains a mystery. The girls are as competitive with each other as they are supportive. When one is up, the other is down. When one turns nasty the other turns needy. They go for long periods of not seeing each other and then fall back into each other's lives with an understanding and a relief that neither finds anywhere else. It is as if they want to lead separate existences but cannot - they have too much in common: the same roots, the same friends, the same enemies, the same strangling family poverty from which they are both trying to escape. Their fates are both completely different and yet inextricably entwined, and it is this that forms both the genius and the heart of the novels.

As I mentioned in my previous review, Ferrante's own'real'identity remains something of a mystery too. She does not give interviews and no one is quite sure who she is. As well as being an intriguing marketing ploy, this means that we have only her books to speak for her. Such anonymity, and yet she chooses her own name - Elena - for one of the protagonists! Does this mean we are reading fiction or autobiography? Or are we just being led a merry dance?

Whatever the truth, I am in awe and - officially - hooked. I shall move onto the third in the trilogy without any wariness whatsoever, hoping for some answers...though I have a feeling Ferrante is not going to make them easy.



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