The tetralogy is finally complete, albeit in a weird order (2, 4, 1 and now 3). Now I'm looking forward to the final season. ( )

The combination of Rousseau and Badiou was getting a little wearing, so I took a break with ‘Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay’. I am probably too tired to write a book review that makes sense at present, but if I will read for hours during fits of insomnia then sleepy reviews are inevitable. The third of the Neapolitan Novels is as compelling as the previous two. Ferrante manages to keep a very impressive continuity of narrative voice over a series of moderately lengthy novels. This installment follows Elena and Lila through their twenties, as political turmoil and violence touch their lives. In some ways the positions of the two friends are reversed; Elena becomes a housewife and Lila finds a new career. They both remain constrained to varying degrees by the roles imposed upon them by femininity, by their families, by their children, and fundamentally by men. Lila’s involvement with communists and Elena’s discovery of feminism are beautifully portrayed and fascinating. The bond between the two remains strong and complex. As before, the novel ends with a vignette that feels climactic thanks to all that has come before, which also spurs me to locate the next in the series. I am very emotionally invested in Elena and Lila at this point.

Ferrante’s writing also continues to be beautiful and insightful:

Finally, I did something I had never done: I got out of bed at four in the morning and left the house by myself, before dawn. I felt very unhappy; I wished something terrible would happen to me, an event that, punishing me for my mistaken actions and my wicked thoughts, would punish Lila, too. But nothing happened. I walked for a long time on the deserted streets, which were much safer than when they were crowded. The sky turned violet. [...] Who knows what feeling I would have had about Naples, about myself, if I had waked every morning not in my neighbourhood but in one of those buildings along the shore. What am I seeking? To change my origins? To change, along with myself, others too? Repopulate this now deserted city with citizens not assailed by poverty or greed, not bitter and angry, who would delight in the splendour of the landscape like the divinities who once inhabited it? Indulge my demon, give him a good life and feel happy? I had used the power of the Airotas [family], people who for generations had been fighting for socialism, people who were on the side of men and women like Pasquale and Lila, not because I thought I would be fixing all the broken things of the world but because I was in a position to help a person I loved, and it seemed wrong not to do so. Had I acted badly? Should I have left Lila in trouble? Never again, never again would I lift a finger for anyone. I departed, I went to get married.

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There is something amiss in the second and in the third installment, something in the first novel that urged towards truth and beauty and awareness, in the middle of a horrible place. **VERY MILD SPOILER AHEAD** It got lost somewhere between a husband and a lover, it has come back sometimes, when Lila was there or Lenù was living her stunted intellectual life with some more conviction, and has been left out of this volume's final cliffhanger.
I will read the last novel looking for redemption.
A rollercoaster of a compelling reading, by the way. It is, for all purposes, a single novel in four parts. ( )

There is something amiss in the second and in the third installment, something in the first novel that urged towards truth and beauty and awareness, in the middle of a horrible place. **VERY MILD SPOILER AHEAD** It got lost somewhere between a husband and a lover, it has come back sometimes, when Lila was there or Lenù was living her stunted intellectual life with some more conviction, and has been left out of this volume's final cliffhanger.
I will read the last novel looking for redemption.
A rollercoaster of a compelling reading, by the way. It is, for all purposes, a single novel in four parts. ( )

Third book in the Neapolitan Quartet, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay continues the story narrated by the novel's Elena about her life among the educated class and the ties she still has to the impoverished, crime-ridden neighborhood she grew up in and where she still has family and old friends, including her brilliant but often troubled best friend Lila. Translated from the Italian, these books merge the deeply personal with political, socio-economic, and philosophical ideas. ( )

This novel is a perfect example of the old saying; You can't judge a book by it's cover. Judging by it's beautiful cover, I just didn't expect this third installment of Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels to end the way it did. Nevertheless, thoroughly enjoyed reading it and can't wait to read the 4th and final installment. ( )

Politics. If I had to think of a single word to sum up this volume, it would be Politics. So much of the action in this story is political, whether it is the Fascists vs. the Communists in late 1960s Italy (a piece of history I know nothing about but keep meaning to look up) or family dynamics, the battle within our own minds, or the enduring roller coaster ride that is the relationship between Elena and Lila. Elena has managed to escape The Neighbourhood and study in Pisa, then marries and moves to Florence. Lila seems to be mired in misfortune and ill-health, until she inexplicably surrenders her morals and gets in bed with the enemy. All the while, the two women come together and fall apart, as waves in competing oceans. This quote sums it up well: "With her, there was no way to feel that things were settled; every fixed point of our relationship sooner or later turned out to be provisional; something shifted in her head that unbalanced her and unbalanced me." (page 226) At some point Elena says that somehow, the two of them cannot be happy and successful at the same time. This narrative resonates so strongly for me at this point in my life, since I was constantly reminded of a friendship in my own life, with a person who very often seems unknowable to me, yet who I consider one of my few intimates. Perhaps this is always the way of friendships between women. My narrow experience is probably not a good indicator of this phenomenon. In any case, as the pages dwindled, I realized the story is far from over, and indeed, it turns out this is a "trilogy in four parts," with one part left to go. I find these novels engrossing and challenging -- as I've said in other reviews, the prose is dense, the description is detailed and yet vivid and memorable. I have had no trouble moving from volume to volume despite long breaks (and other novels consumed) in between, because the narration is so strong and readable. I look forward to the next, final volume. ( )

Listened to the first half, read the second half - much faster. Boy, this series is just unstoppable. I’m totally gripped, and will start reading #4 tomorrow! ( )

In the third book of the Neapolitan quartet, we follow main characters Elena and Lila into their thirties, as they develop livelihoods and rear children. Set in the 1960s-1970s Italy, this book contains more about the political climate of the era, including violent clashes between the communists and fascists. Elena and her relationships are the primary focus of this storyline with intermittent appearances by Lila.

It is a family saga filled with unpleasant people, dysfunctional relationships, and questionable decisions that complicate their lives. There are many scenes from daily life – conversations around the dinner table, phone conversations, and lots of chit-chat. Many say this is a story of female friendship, but it is not affectionate or supportive, and, in fact, seems pretty toxic. The romantic relationships are almost all toxic as well. I came away with a lukewarm feeling, but I am out of step with the numerous readers who love this series. I liked it enough to read the final installment.
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Finished it five minutes ago. It was a rollercoaster like the other two volumes. What changed is my admiration for Elena Greco - by the end of the book she made me a angry for her choice. Someone who wrote a beautiful review here said it so well: "everyone has to make their own mistakes". I guess it's very true for the generation of the Italian women in the 60s and 70s, who were early in trying to settle down and build families, as it is true for women worldwide today who settle down later: some mistakes that love pushes you to make are unavoidable. And the more you raised yourself on the straight and narrow, the more you abstained yourself from getting detailed from the social standard, the more prone you are to just go down one day with a bang.

Is Elena forgiveable? Probably yes. Will she be able to forgive herself? I wonder. I'm curious about how that will unwind in the last volume. ( )

The third book in the Neapolitan quartet continues on where the story left off. The woman are now in their early twenties and are dealing with marital issues, child rearing, career development and most importantly trying to find their place in the world. Our protagonist has left Naples for greener pastures, but is constantly drawn back into her past. This is a wonderful examination of the socio-economic issues during the later 50s and 60s in post-war Italy as well as a gripping tale of friendship, love and loss. ( )

Lila married at 16 now has a son, has left her marriage and it’s advantages, and works as a common laborer in horrendous conditions. Elena has left the neighborhood, graduated from college, and has published a successful novel opening a new world to her. Both women fight against a world of oppression amidst a time of great opportunities that were opening for women during the seventies. ( )

This is the third book in the Neapolitan novels. Lena and Lila are now young women in a rapidly changing society. To me the focus of this part of the story is the social conflict between the Fascists and the Communists and the emergence of Women's Liberation movement. Lila is working in a sausage factory to gain her independence and support she and her son. The conditions are appalling and sexual harassment of the female workforce by the males is entrenched. When Lena becomes aware of this she uses her sphere of influence and writes an article for a newspaper. This results in violent clashes between the Trade Unionists and the fascists and Lila's job becomes untenable.
Lena keeps counting her blessings at having moved to a different city and her first book has been successful. She feels that her choice of fiance means that she will not experience disappointment in her marriage. However, she is both sexually and emotionally disappointed, as her husband Pietro proves no different to other less educated men, not allowing the use of contraception and in his perception of the role she will play to support his work and study as a university lecturer.
The book shows the gradual erosion of her love for him and her increasing dissatisfaction with her life. It also continues with the stories of the other young people from their Neapolitan neighbourhood and the on going interconnections between the families.
Before I had finished this third book in the series I was online purchasing the fourth and final book. ( )

A long journey but this one certainly ends with a bang. Reading about being a woman in 60's-70's Italy and Lena's attempt at feminist consciousness raising feels very consistent with the events of 2017 in the US.
It has me thinking about a related tangent: I would love to see childcare transformed into a profession that had a real career track. It would require education and compensation in line with its value, which is deep - the nurturing and preparation of the next generations. This is hidden work that has been done by women for free forever. That change would transform women's lives.
At any rate I am looking forward to the next book. ( )

I did not love this book as much as the other two. It seemed somewhat predictable which was annoying. The friends seemed to have lost their selves in this book. Hopefully it ends on a high note in book 4. ( )

Three books down. One more to go. No less fascinated by Elena and Lila than I was in the beginning. I'm not too optimistic about Elena's long-term prospects for happiness with the major life choice she makes at the end of this one, but am eager to find out how Ferrante wraps up the story. ( )

I'll be honest: I didn't finish it. I liked the first two of her Neapolitan series a lot, and stuck with this one as long as I could. But finally I decided I didn't want to be around these people any more. I got tired of them, of their miseries and cruelties. The women are trapped, the men (well, almost all of them) are boors or thugs. Absolutely no one loves anyone in any kind of generous, kind way: it's all about desire and possession and subjugation. The sex ranges from just joyless to brutal. The boy-now-man that the narrator Elena has been mooning over for two and a half volumes and many years is a jerk, so even if she gets together with him, I won't like it. The mothers can barely even stand their own kids. The complexity has ceased to be personal, emotional, or developmental... it's all just plot now, with the same cast going through the same wringer. Tedious. ( )

Neapolitan Novels volume 3 is not any less gripping then the preceding two volumes, even if it starts off a bit slower than volume 2. Elena's steadily intensifying domestic drama easily overcomes a weak self-referential subplot about the critical reception of the novel she wrote in the last book, while Lila's struggles with the fallout of her own decisions become even more interesting when set against the labor militancy of the time. While both characters live in much larger worlds than they did as children, and desperately seek to widen their horizons and pursue their own dreams, they still find themselves constrained by their own choices and their own personal limitations. It's remarkable how much Ferrante makes you sympathize with people making truly terrible decisions out of short-term blindness, but I think most readers will be slapping their foreheads in frustration by the end of this one, as Elena's momentous decision at the book's climax really makes you wonder if Voltaire's line of "to know all is to forgive all" is actually true.

Elena's scenes in the beginning were not very interesting, particularly the parts where she dealt with critical reactions to her first novel. It's usually dull when authors try to respond to their critics from within their works, and though Ferrante never descends to the level of Michael Crichton, who wrote one of his critics into a novel as a child molestor, it's hard not to be bored as her stand-in ponders on how people just don't understand her. I don't doubt that it's what Ferrante actually felt about reading criticism of her pre-Neapolitan Novels works, and I don't doubt that female authors in the 1960s faced similar professional challenges, especially for writing "scandalous" books with sex scenes in them, but I personally prefer authors to just write their damn books and let critics battle it out later. It's doubly frustrating, since Ferrante even has Elena think about the need to define her own life, in the context of feminist criticism of the portrayal of women in Moll Flanders, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, and so on. I think the key thing is to write what you feel, because that can't be faked, and you then don't need to worry about authenticity. Her scenes do get much better later on, especially when she returns to Naples and deals with her inability to remove the Mafia-like tentacles of the Solaras from her life. Her own sister marries a Solara, which comes as a real shock to her, but Lila as usual is more perceptive:

"May I point out something? You always use true and truthfully, when you speak and when you write. Or you say: unexpectedly. But when do people ever speak truthfully and when do things ever happen unexpectedly? You know better than I that it's all a fraud and that one thing follows another and then another. I don't do anything truthfully anymore, Lenù. And I've learned to pay attention to things. Only idiots believe that they happen unexpectedly."

Lila's scenes were all quite good. I don't know if Ferrante has ever read Upton Sinclair, but the way that Lila deals with the grimness of her sausage factory job made for a good companion/update to The Jungle. The political parts of the book are fairly true to real life, so if you're familiar with the creation of the Italian regions in 1970 or have read Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work there is much to compare to here. But all of that stuff is less interesting than how Lila sees it - here she's working with Bruno, the kid who was so much fun in that long-ago summer of romance in Ischia, who could have helped her out of her own difficulties but is just a loutish boss. And yet rather than turn trustingly to the labor movement, à la Jurgis Rudkus, Lila has to be coaxed kicking and screaming into fighting against her own exploitation. Just like in real life, where people are very suspicious of movements or isms. And yet even though she's become bitter, or had her existing bitterness exposed to the world, her new tenderness toward Enzo after she leaves the factory for computer work is touching. Just the two of them and her son, at relative peace in their own little corner of the world, slowly bringing Italy into the modern era of automation.

Elena's part to play in the Class Struggle is somewhat different, as befits her different station in life. Her marriage to the educated, intelligent, well-connected Pietro, while on paper a perfect match, fills her with ambivalence even as she tries to do her part and write the political pieces she's so praised for. Pietro is not a very sympathetic character, in fact he comes off as kind of a jerk until the later parts, but one thing this series is very good at is making you aware of how very different your life looks to other people; you can edit life to your heart's content in your own diary, but not anyone else's. Her struggles to write, and her complicated feelings about her gift, appeal strongly to anyone who has creative struggles of their own. Her relationship to Lila also just keeps getting more complicated somehow. They're closer than ever in some ways, as Elena even helps raise Lila's son Gennaro, but she's still forced to use that coded language to discuss what's really important to her:

"I knew clearly, now, that our friendship was possible only if we controlled our tongues. For example, I couldn't confess to her that a dark part of me feared that she was casting an evil spell on me from afar, that that part still hoped that she was really sick and would die. For example, she couldn't tell me the real reasons that motivated the rough, often offensive, tone in which she treated me. So we confined ourselves to talking about Gennaro, who was one of the smartest children in the elementary school, about Dede, who already knew how to read, and we did it like two mothers doing the normal boasting of mothers. Or I mentioned my attempt to write, but without making a big deal of it, I said only: I'm working, it's not easy, being pregnant makes me tired. Or I tried to find out if Michele was still hanging around her, to somehow capture her and keep her. Or, sometimes, I would ask if she liked certain movie or television actors, and urge her to tell me if men unlike Enzo attracted her, and perhaps confide to her that it happened to me, too, that I was attracted to men unlike Pietro. But this last subject didn't seem to interest her."

And on that last point, get ready for a lot of Nino, because he dominates this volume from beginning to end. I don't know if this is supposed to be a commentary on how you shouldn't let your fantasies of certain people cloud your rational judgment, but from his appearance at the book signing at the start of the book to the closing scene of him and Elena flying off an a plane, he's like a comet that orbits back in to disrupt the two girls' lives every once in a while. Remember how Nino loved and left Lila? He's a compulsive womanizer, the perfect vehicle for unhappy women to project their own dissatisfaction onto, and it's never a question of if Lila will leave Pietro for Nino, but when, even though it's clearly doomed and you wonder how such an articulate, intelligent person could be so stupid.

Is there such a thing as the definitive novel of adultery? Tolstoy's famous line in Anna Karenina that "happy families are all alike" seems inverted here, as everyone's unhappy life takes similar paths of disillusionment. I wouldn't say that the Neapolitan Novels fully explores every possible dimension of adultery, only that Ferrante makes Elena's struggles with unhappiness, emptiness, and unfulfillment very real and relatable. Do you want someone who will challenge you and change you, or someone who who loves you just as you are? How do you know when a decision is right for you? Can you always trust your own feelings, especially ones that feel "so right"? Elena experiences the passion of finding someone new to love, the jealousy of knowing that Nino had done this before, the rage of not being able to fully trust someone willing to throw their marriage away, the guilt of knowing she did the same to her own marriage, the self-righteousness of leaving someone she doesn't love, the sadness of seeing the break's effects on her children.

The book ends with her flying off with Nino. This can't end well, but I can't stop reading. ( )

Even if we don’t admit or try to deny it, we all have a difficult relationship with mirrors. As I age, I believe I have become more disdainful of it, less preoccupied with the reflection of myself, less worried that I don’t conform to some societal rules of beauty or femininity. Yet, if I don’t scrutinize the mirror as I once did in my teenage years – oh, those years when the mirror seemed to reflect so much of my perceived faults – these days the mirror surprises me. There are times when a fast glance shows not the person I perceive myself to be, but I get glimpses of my mother, my grandmothers, my sisters, or even my father in a nanosecond of time. A smile, a wrinkle, a stance… all remind me of others, what I have become or will become, and what I am no longer.

What if then the mirror was alive, an organic entity, that also changed as time went by? Would the mirror see in us its faults? Would the mirror idealize us or hate us?

In this series – I am writing this one single review for the 4 books as I felt them to be too interconnected to be reviewed separately – Elena Ferrante’s writing made me think of mirrors constantly. The 2 main characters lives are connected in a web of relationships, friendship, cultural and geographical background, aspirations, tragedy, envy, love and hate. They reflected each other’s lives and used such reflection as measurement of themselves, either being propelled forward by the comparison, or held back in a stated of continual resentment and hurt for what they did not achieve. We all have experienced this, I am sure. The facebook friend’s vacation that reminds us that we have not had a vacation in a long time. The high school classmate that looks so much younger, happier and richer than we do. Or the one that has been struck by personal tragedy and that reminds us that our own lives are blessed after all. All reflecting back at us, as true mirrors, our unfilled dreams, our shortcomings and, if we perceive ourselves being happy and successful, our pride and entitlement.

In the background of the main storyline, the lives of two women for more than 50 years, we learn of the neighborhood dynamics in this Naples shantytown, then of the political and cultural waves happening in Italy. We are exposed to motherhood, feminism, class warfare, family dysfunction, sexual awakening, violence, etc, etc, etc….

If I have one complain about Elena Ferrante’s writing is that it seems too long winding at times. She – whoever she may be, or he, as Elena Ferrante is an alias and although all the speculation about its true identy, we might never know – has a love for words and descriptions. We as readers can almost feel the pleasure she must have felt writing long and beautiful lines. I felt as drunk for her words as she must have felt writing them. But at times I wished that the narrator hurried on. The amount of detail seemed unnecessary and overly done. However I will forgive her, because when it was finally done, I felt sorry that she had not keep on going and lulled me along for yet longer.

I should mention that I listened to the whole series in audio and that Hilary Huber does a beautiful and nuanced reading of it.
( )

Mi favorito de la tetralogía de Ferrante. Me parece el más redondo y en dónde se madura la historia. ( )

We had a lively discussion in our book club about this third installment - a mixture of frustration and delight at the characters' inability to realize when they are messing up, and admiration at the authenticity of portraying a complex European experience - yes, it is very Italian, very much Naples, but a lot the developments are happening at the same time in other parts of Europe, making it easier to see the global connections. ( )

This is a two part review of the Neapolitan Novels as a whole: one about how good they are, the other about the series' very deep flaws. The other one, about their problems, can be found here.

There are, of course, lots of reasons to love these books, but unfortunately for me, I miss out on the big one: the relationship between Lila and Elena. Perhaps it's just that if I find myself in a tempestuous, unpredictable friendship, it usually doesn't last very long; give me solid, predictable, comforting. Perhaps there's a big difference between male/male friendships and female/female friendships. Perhaps (insert cliche about fiery Mediterranean and cold-fish northern Europeans here). But in any case, I can't complain about that focus of the book. It's just not for me.

The two great things about the NN, from my very restricted perspective, are i) Elena's life story, and, ii) the way Ferrante brings in the post-war history of Italy, which is surely among the most fascinating stories of post-war Europe, provided you didn't have to live through it.

Elena's up from grimy Naples narrative is the less interesting of these two, but I'm a sucker for a good intellectual biography, and hers is great: the pull of the hometown, the pull of the wider world, the disgust at the provinces, the discovery that things are mostly better in the metropole, but far from perfect, the struggles of a professional writer... this is just good stuff.

But the attempt (not entirely successful) to combine this with the catastrophes of the country as a whole is far more interesting. A friend of mine wrote about politics in the first three novels, suggesting that American leftists were wrong to read them as revolutionary--rather, he argued, they emphasize "a form of politics, and of thinking, that is skeptical not only of critical theory’s vocabulary but also of its utopian aspirations." Abstract ideas can't always be applied to concrete circumstances, which is not a reason to ignore abstract ideas--but there will be give and take between idea and circumstance.

This argument is more or less confirmed by The Story of the Lost Child, in which the ideologies are all revealed as irrelevant to the liberal capitalist twenty-first century and, even more damningly, often seem like little more than a way for Elena to become a successful writer: she goes through a leftist phase, a feminist phase, a radical feminist phase, only to settle into an uncomfortable liberalism. Of immediate relevance to the internet-left, too, is Elena's discomfort with the language-policing of the Italian communists, and the self-righteousness of the country's intellectuals, most of whom end up to have taken bribes. This is not a plot spoiler if you know much about Italy.

Anyway, I think my friend is half right, but his argument doesn't take into account Italian history. In a strange way, even he falls into the trap of applying abstract ideas to a concrete circumstance--in this case, the move of literary critics, writers and intellectuals who like to stress the irreducibility of the concrete. That is not, I think, an idea that can be applied to Italy in the second half of the twentieth century, where the ideas and the concrete weren't as opposed as they are in contemporary, liberal America: in Italy, and in Ferrante's novels, the ideas were real, they were embodied, whether in fascist authorities or terrorist leftists. To suggest that the novels make the "irreducibility" move, then, ignores, well, the irreducability of history.

Anyway: it's glorious that Ferrante even tries to include such a huge swathe of difficult history into these books, from the fascist/communist hatreds of the early post-war period, through the proliferation of political perspectives, the economic boom, the years of lead, and the endless scandals. Is it entirely successful? I don't think so, because we never get an understanding of this history outside Elena's own perspective on it: first person narrative is not particularly well suited to broad political situations.

One final, impressive part of the series: the conclusion. While other authors of extremely long novels or sequences struggle to conclude (consider the disaster that is the end of Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, though perhaps that was forced on him by the 'sixties), Ferrante wraps it up perfectly. I wasn't that interested with the second half of volume four, but I slowed down for the last section. That's no mean feat over however many thousand pages. ( )

Another wonderful Neapolitan Novel! I really related to the issues of identity Elena addresses in this one. So glad I have #4 already and can start on it right away! ( )

Lenuccia: sometimes I just want to give her a good kick.
I am loving the language...it is as if I am rediscovering my mother tongue, long neglected. One more book to finish the series, let's do it. ( )

It's truly an engaging and emotive story that Elena Ferrante continues telling us in this third book of her tetralogy. It's amazing how she has the ability to manage the word in such a way that the result is its materialization in a story that exposes in a simple and genuine way, without filters, the intimacy of a friendship between two female friends - from childhood to adulthood, with all its details, adventures, frustrations, moments of happiness and sorrow, loves and dislikes. I truly recommend these books! :) ( )