The Nature of Things

Twelve-year-old Giovanna is going through puberty and she is not having an easy time of it. She has always had a good relationship with her parents, especially her father who has always assured her that she is beautiful and brilliant. She believed him and her self-image and ego were healthy and strong. Then one night she overhears a conversation between her parents in which her father compares Giovanna to his long-estranged and thoroughly loathed sister, Vittoria. Vittoria's name has long been shorthand in their family for everything ugly and evil. Giovanna understands her father to be saying that she is ugly. She is completely devastated. In short order, she loses her moorings. She becomes moody and obstreperous with her parents and her school work begins to suffer. Her parents come to understand that she must have overheard and perhaps misinterpreted their talk and they attempt to repair the damage, but she is unresponsive. She has become obsessed with her Aunt Vittoria whom she ...

I have greatly enjoyed the writing of the Italian author who uses the nom de plume Elena Ferrante. During the past year, I have read all four of her series of Neapolitan novels, stories of two girls born in Naples in 1944 who grew up in that troubled city where swaggering machismo rules. I found a lot to identify with in those girls, especially in their struggles to develop their complex identities in a society that recognized only one honorable role for girls and women - that of subservient wife and mother. These books, narrated in a straightforward manner by one of the women characters (named Elena), tell stories of poverty and violence, of the role of education and the ambition to make more out of life than those around you, and mostly they contrast feminism and patriarchy, how the two clash and how they exist side by side. They are humanistic stories that allow us to imagine ourselves as one or more of the characters and to see things from her viewpoint. They've been much accla...

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante My rating: 5 of 5 stars  "Where is it written that lives should have a meaning?" - from The Story of the Lost Child I couldn't wait any longer to get back to the story of Elena and Lila. I had read the first three books of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels over the past five months, interspersed with my other reading. Now it was time to face up to the end; to find out how the relationship of these two women, built on a foundation of childhood friendship and resentment, would resolve itself. In returning to the story, I quickly felt again my irritation with Elena. Do you ever feel the urge to reach into the pages of a novel you are reading, grab a character by the shoulders and shout, "No! Don't do it! You're being stupid! Can't you see that he is just like his sleazy, philandering father who disgusts you?" That's exactly how I felt throughout reading about Elena's grand passion for Nino. R...

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante My rating: 4 of 5 stars "Each of us narrates our life as it suits us." - Lila Cerullo in Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay This is the third in Elena Ferrante's acclaimed Neapolitan Quartet of novels which chronicle the lifelong friendship of Lila and Elena. In this one, the women have reached their mid-twenties and we follow them to their early thirties. The time is 1969 to the mid-'70s. I think it would be a huge mistake to try to read any one of these novels as a stand-alone or to read them out of order. Each one builds on the previous book(s) and each is a continuation of that narration of two lives. Here we find that Lila, having left the comforts or at least the prestige offered by her marriage to the businessman Stefano, is working at a sausage factory and living, along with her young son, with her childhood friend Enzo who is in love with her. They maintain a platonic relationship.  Lila is overworked and...

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante My rating: 5 of 5 stars The Story of a New Name is the second in Elena Ferrante's highly-praised Neapolitan Quartet. In it, we again meet the two friends. Lila and Elena, both born in August 1944 and now in their late teens and early twenties. By the end of the first book, My Brilliant Friend , teenaged Lila was already married to the wealthy grocer Stefano. Their marriage had continued the neighborhood pattern of rape and beatings. The "brilliant" Lila, who, like Elena, had longed for a different kind of life away from the impoverished neighborhood where they grew up, had escaped the poverty of her childhood in her marriage to Stefano, but she couldn't escape the culture of male domination and physical abuse. That was simply the accepted way of the world. It was inevitable that the spirited Lila would eventually rebel and seek more from life. The only surprising thing about that was where and from whom she sought that ...

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante My rating: 4 of 5 stars With the publication of The Story of the Lost Child in 2015, Elena Ferrante completed her quartet of extravagantly praised "Neapolitan Stories." It seemed about time for me to get on board with reading the books to find out what all the shouting was about. My Brilliant Friend , published in 2012, was the first of the series. It begins with the main protagonist, Elena, learning that her friend Lila has disappeared, not for the first time. Elena and Lila are now in their 60s and Lila's latest disappearance causes Elena to reminisce about their long friendship and the events which marked and shaped their lives. My Brilliant Friend is a telling of those reminiscences. Elena and Lila grew up on the outskirts of Naples. It is the 1950s when we meet them. Both girls are six years old. They live in a neighborhood where violence is an everyday fact of life. Men settle their inevitable disagreements on the streets wit...