Still hooked

Amazing story of friendship, hardship, lovers won and lovers lost, all with the underpinning of how education weaves its way through one life and not the other. Ready to start book three.

16 people found this helpful

Another brilliant novel

After reading some of the negative reviews I couldn't believe that this author could produce anything other than another brilliant novel . Fortunately I was proved correct. The second of a quartet this book continues the story of Lena and Linu. The depiction of the individual personalities of the two women, their lives, lusts, goals and actions are mesmerizing . The author's language is beautiful and the narrator is unsurpassed.

15 people found this helpful

Heavy and engaging

This book will suck you in, pull you down, wind you up. It's sad and fascinating and frustrating but incredibly engaging. I feel like I know each character personally, like I live and grew up there. The narrator builds the feeling and characters with just the slightest change in her tone. I'm intrigued to continue on in the series.

10 people found this helpful

Beautiful

Without ever having known me, the writer expresses what have been my feelings, my doubts, my unrequited love, my regrets, my insecurities, my wretchedness. She touches the suffering and joys that we think are so unique to ourselves and by doing so we realise that they are universal.

6 people found this helpful

Phenomenal Favola circa Due Amici

"Whenever this world is cruel to me
I got you to help me forgive
Ooh you make me live now honey
Ooh you make me live."
You're My Best Friend, Queen, 1975

This is the second of a tetralogy called the "Neopolitan Novels," by the Italian novelist Elena Ferrante (a pseudonym). Ms. Ferrante says she considers the four volumes to constitute one novel. In Italy, the books are so popular that the periodical publications have regularly engaged in a game of speculation on the author's true identity.

The books center on the lives and friendship of two girls from Naples, Italy, Elena Greco (called sometimes "Lenù") and Raffaella ("Lila") Cerullo. Both are intelligent and precocious young students in the first book called My Brilliant Friend, which takes them up to 16 years old. This one, The Story of a New Name carries them to their mid-20s. Elena is the narrator, but it's truly about both of them, and all that relationship entails through the years, including intellectual and sexual competition and envy, and support for each other as they attempt to rise above their poor, vulgar and sometimes violent neighborhood on the Naples outskirts.

In some ways, Ms. Ferrante's writing reminds me of that by the Norwegian Karl Ove Knaussgard in his six-volume My Struggle, so conversational and existential without being overly gloomy. I can't pin down exactly why but I find these books absolutely absorbing and fascinating. I want to keep reading... and reading.... It's like a dip into the soul of the authors, their daily lives, and the intriguing neighborhood interrelationships, friendships, as the authors call you forth, in examining their own lives, to examine yours, your childhood, childhood friends, being an adult, growing older, how sad things turn out for many who could not escape their surroundings, your recollections of certain things but haziness on others, the meaning of art and lit in life and to a full life, the meaning of your upbringing in your life, the ways you are like and differ from your parents when you become a parent, the place you grew up, how it felt to be isolated, in love with someone, to lose them to another, in lust, puppy love, your first sexual encounter, how you felt upon seeing someone again or for the first time in years and years. The Neopolitan novels are full of good and evil and eccentric characters.

I found the first novel a little tedious at times because it mostly involved elementary age kids. Unlike the Karl Ove novels, it is necessary to read these in order. For this second one, I was all in, finding it simply jaw-dropping at times. I'm already halfway through the 3d now, I've enjoyed them so much.

Highly recommended.

16 people found this helpful

Excellent

One of the best book I have ever read!
This book should be on every women's reading list.

10 people found this helpful

Rolling right over into the next book....

Literature for the ages, to read again and again. As T.S. Eliot said, "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

3 people found this helpful

Incredibly honest, simple prose

Ferrante simply and genuinely seems to reflect on the tangled bonds of friendship with candor and depth. The ever-changing yet always the same “neighborhood” abounds with varied lives and sordid scandal - all within the readers reach of true understanding. “Greco” reflects on not only her own short comings but also gives life to an enigmatic friendship in which one seems to realize her strengths and weaknesses as she does. It’s as if the reader is a silent neighborhood friend, listening & understanding the increasingly-volatile Neapolitan life that sews Lila & Elena together - rips them apart - and sews them together again. Ferrante - whomever she is - is a skilled seamstress of the written word, vibrantly bringing forth color and colloquialism in late 20th century Italy.

3 people found this helpful

Abandoned the book half way

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

I'm not sure. Perhaps those who don't get involved in the story as much.

Would you ever listen to anything by Elena Ferrante again?

No, I don't think so.

What about Hillary Huber’s performance did you like?

Beautifully read.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

I really enjoyed the first book. I found this one slow and I had difficulty inhibiting the revulsion I felt for all the characters. There was nothing left to become involved in the story.I could not identify with anyone or any action. It all seemed so contradictory and trivial.

14 people found this helpful

Completely addicted

Sorry, but I don't want to take the time to review this book. I must start book 3 immediately.

11 people found this helpful