Giving and Taking Away

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


'Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay' is the third in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, a series that tracks the lives of two girls, Elena and Lila, as they grow up in the poorest, most violent area of mid-twentieth century Naples, leaving it and returning to it, and going through periods of loving and hating each other in the process.

I have to say that for me this is the weakest of the series so far. I almost gave up on it several times. Once or twice I was even close to hurling it across the room. The reason being that the story-telling is so non-stop, so dense, so packed with its vast cast of characters doing this and that, not to mention the central narrative of Elena and Lina's relationship, criss-crossing and oscillating as they fall out, or fall in, or understand each other, or don't understand each other, that the cumulative effect is at times not unlike being hit over the head. Apologies to Elena Ferrante, who is without doubt the most remarkable writer, with a hell of a tale to tell, but for me she occasionally treads a fine line between being entertaining and downright annoying.

At times, I also found myself really struggling with the central relationship between the two women. Their pendulum swings of affection are so extreme - from intense closeness to years passing without communicating - that it stretched my credulity. Then there is the character of Lila herself, Elena's arch rival but also her kindred spirit, who is generally more off the rails than Elena and living dangerously and slaving herself to death and losing her looks, but somehow hordes of men - even the ones whom we are originally led to believe do not like her - are - as it turns out - in love with her. And not just in a regular way, but in a content-to-be-your-slave-and-breathe-the-same-air sort of way. If the rumours that Elena Ferrante is writing about her own life are true, and that such a friendship is exactly one she has known, then I apologise again and can only say that her way of communicating its dynamics do not always ring true.

If I sound like a sourpuss, let me add that the final third of the novel, covering Elena's marriage and motherhood, really took off, gripping me like a thriller. It ended with a sort of cliff-hanger situation (no spoilers in my reviews!) which, cleverly, was both exactly what one had longed to happen but which one knows cannot lead anywhere good. It was as if the plot was giving the reader something with one hand, while threatening to take it away with the other. The net result was, I closed this third book longing to start the fourth. Oh yes, Elena Ferrante is a clever writer indeed.



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