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Favorite quote: "each of us narrates our life as it suits us."
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This is the third book in the Neapolitan series, and I will have to wait almost another year for the fourth. I could not put this book down, it was that compelling. Ferrante gives us a glimpse of what Naples was like during the 60s & 70s in an impoverished neighborhood. Elena and Lila, best friends in grade school are now in their late 20s, early 30s with young children.
This is the third book in the series and parts of it were really good but much of it did not interest me. This book focuses on the political turmoil going on because of horrendous labor practices in parts of italy. There is a lot of violence and intrigue, but I just want the story to be about Elena and Lila. When the story is about them as friends, I would rate it 4 stars. I don't think I have ever read a book where women express their insecurities, their ambitions and their ambivalence about th
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This is a 4.5 to me...this series of books is the saga of two women who originate in a poor neighborhood in Naples in the 1960s. From this brief description, you might expect chick lit or some light historical fiction. Yet, through their lives and experiences , the reader encounters their internal lives and struggles, the social atmosphere of Italy during this time, the struggle to rise above through whatever meager opportunities that exist... This series treats love, economics, gender issues, p
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This morning on the train, I finished Elena Ferrente's third Neapolitan novel, "Those who leave and those who stay." Wow! Just wow! I can't recall the last time I was that engaged in a book. Ferrente is the master of making you live the scenes and feel with the characters. I was there, in every scene, hearing every conversation. I don't know what is going to happen to me after I finish the fourth and last book. I have been living with these characters for months. I can't just leave them and go o
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This volume is choppier than the second but more intense by the end. Elena is so infuriatingly submissive and dense and it began to grate but her final transformation is an even greater release for how tightly wound she is for most of the novel. Reading these books make me angrier, generally. Angry about the many ways, big and small, the world represses women but, probably more, that we allow it to happen too often. I couldn't read these every day but they're so powerful in such a quiet way. The
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I've got nothing but love for this series of books.
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