My Brilliant Friend - Neapolitan Novels #2, #3, and #4 (August 2015)

[Marc]

Several of you have already read The Story of a New Name and Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, so I thought this thread could contain and discussion/conversation related to the rest of the books in this series. Those, like myself, still wanting to read books 2-4 without spoilers, will probably want to steer clear of this thread.

[Lily]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/boo...

Review today in NYT by Rachel Cusk of the Neapolitan novels of Elena Ferrante. (Number 4 in the series.) I don't consider it to particularly have spoilers, but then who am I to say, given my relative insensitivity to them.

The Story of the Lost Child

[Lily]

Summary for Number 2 in the series:
The Story of a New Name (471 pp)

(view spoiler)["The second book, following last year's My Brilliant Friend, featuring the two friends Lila and Elena. The two protagonists are now in their twenties. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila. Meanwhile, Elena continues her journey of self-discovery. The two young women share a complex and evolving bond that brings them close at times, and drives them apart at others. Each vacillates between hurtful disregard and profound love for the other. With this complicated and meticulously portrayed friendship at the center of their emotional lives, the two girls mature into women, paying the cruel price that this passage exacts." (hide spoiler)]

From local library catalog entry. Original source not retrieved.

[Lily]

Summary for Number 3 in the series:
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (418 pp)

(view spoiler)["Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, the first of the Neapolitan novels, Elena Ferrante's fame as one of our most compelling, insightful, and stylish contemporary authors has grown enormously. She has gained admirers among authors--Jhumpa Lahiri, Elizabeth Strout, Claire Messud, to name a few--and critics--James Wood, John Freeman, Eugenia Williamson, for example. But her most resounding success has undoubtedly been with readers, who have discovered in Ferrante a writer who speaks with great power and beauty of the mysteries of belonging, human relationships, love, family, and friendship. In this third Neapolitan novel, Elena and Lila, the two girls whom eaders first met in My Brilliant Friend, have become women. Lila married at sixteen and has a young son; she has left her husband and the comforts of her marriage brought and now works as a common laborer. Elena has left the neighborhood, earned her college degree, and published a successful novel, all of which has opened the doors to a world of learned interlocutors and richly furnished salons. Both women are pushing against the walls of a prison that would have seen them living a life of mystery, ignorance and submission. They are afloat on the great sea of opportunities that opened up during the nineteen-seventies. Yet they are still very much bound to see each other by a strong, unbreakable bond." (hide spoiler)]

From local library catalog entry. Original source not retrieved.

[Lily]

Summary (short) for Number 4 in the series:
The Story of the Lost Child (473 pp)

(view spoiler)["The ... saga of two women: the brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. In this book, both are adults; life's great discoveries have been made, its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Through it all, the women's friendship, examined in its every detail over the course of four books, remains the gravitational center of their lives"--Amazon.com.
(hide spoiler)]

From local library catalog entry.

[Marc]

A quote from The Story of a New Name (Book #2):

"Yes, it's Lila who makes writing difficult. My life forces me to imagine what hers would have been if what happened to me had happened to her, what use she would have made of my luck. And her life continuously appears in mine, in the words that I've uttered, in which there's often an echo of hers, in a particular gesture that is an adaptation of a gesture of hers, in my less which is such because of her more, in my more which is the yielding of the force of her less. Not to mention what she never said but let me guess, what I didn't know and read later in her notebooks. Thus the story of the facts has to reckon with filters, deferments, partial truths, half lies: from it comes an arduous measurement of time passed that is based completely on the unreliable measuring device of words."

[Nutmegger]

I finished book 1 and while I enjoyed it, I don't know if I'm ready to plunge into the second book immediately. I have so many books on my to read list that I feel like I'm sinking. However, I shall persevere.

[Marc]

Linda wrote: "I finished book 1 and while I enjoyed it, I don't know if I'm ready to plunge into the second book immediately. I have so many books on my to read list that I feel like I'm sinking. However, I sh..."

The plight of all readers!

[Lily]

Linda wrote: "I finished book 1 and while I enjoyed it, ..."

I've been working on Proust for years -- Ferrante seems easier, however. I don't think I "enjoyed" My Brilliant Friend so much as some others have, but I did pick up book 3 at the library and think I may enjoy it more. Book 2 is on its way (purchased, somehow, decided I wanted a "real" book rather than the Kindle version, which is what I have of Book 1), but given the introductory material for #3, it seemed as if I might even have gotten away with skipping from #1 to #3. But, then, I am idiosyncratic on how I read these days, partly because I feel as if I have read so much that being able to skip or skim or substitute reviews has become as necessary/useful as title-to-final sentence reading. And I know and understand that costs me even as it enables. Not always certain I get the balance to the best advantage. But, (sadly?) I am also becoming increasingly aware that many reviews seem to be based on partial reads. I am also enjoying re-reads more and more -- CDs of War and Peace are in my car and I am enjoying this third pass immensely -- the main characters are crisper and the second and third level ones are becoming known, recognizable, even predictable. (It is for the characters, more than the plot, that I am enjoying relistening in this case, although I begin to get more of a sense of about what the historians argue.)

[LindaJ^]

I had book 2 on audio and couldn't sleep so just laid and listened to it last night. Lena and Lila seem to envy each other. Hard to appreciate what is the connection. Lila seems more impulsive in this book. Lena finally seems to mature and take her life in her own hands. Still not sure why she wrote that novel and gave it to her finacee.