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meghaha's review against another edition
3.0
"Each of us narrates our life as it suits us."
3.5 stars
I'm conflicted about Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. It's probably technically as good as the other books, but the narrative is also so intentionally depressing and stifling that it makes it hard to effortlessly enjoy. When the novel opens, it seems that Elena has finally achieved happiness after years of struggle: she's graduated from university, she's published her novel, she's about to be married, she's leaving Naples.
But it all turns to ash in her mouth, our mouths. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise. Depressing as it is, happiness is not so easily achievable, and it doesn't materialize just because you've checked off a list of accomplishments. Elena soon realizes that marriage is a prison, a contract that binds her to housework and children. Her husband doesn't support or appreciate her intellectual abilities; he prefers her to stay at home and be submissive. A dismaying turn of events, to be sure.
I suppose Ferrante could've written about a happy marriage, but what conflict would there be for Elena then? And I suppose it's happened often enough that it's a truth that needs to be told: the story of a brilliant woman married to a man who doesn't deserve her, expected to take care of the duties of wife and mother to the point that she has no freedom to pursue her own desires and thoughts. A woman who's more talented than the man she's married to, but it's only he who gets to study, work, publish, and garner respect. This is the story of countless women married to male academics and artists. Reading about Elena's situation, once again I was reminded of Sylvia Plath. One of the most brilliant poets of the 20th century, and her second-rate poet of a husband had her to do most of the chores.
Amongst housework and children, Elena begins to write another novel, a socio-political book in which she would: “leave behind me what Franco had called petty love affairs and write something suited to a time of demonstrations, violent deaths, police repression, fears of a coup d’état." I wonder if this is the meta commentary of what Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay is supposed to be in comparison to the previous book, Story of a New Name. Certainly this novel is broader in scope, the first section dedicated to narrating the turbulent political scene of Italy, the social upheaval and transition in the years 1968-1976. The problem is that even as Elena admits that she's losing touch with people in Naples and what's going on in the world because of the suffocating nature of being a mother and wife, this benching of Elena means that we hear of all these events secondhand. The narrative loses immediacy; we're reduced to reporting of facts. Of course, I still appreciate learning about it, and I know Elena's distance and inaction was a conscious choice by Ferrante-- but it still made it less satisfying to read about.
This second novel Elena completes is a failure, so she gives up writing for a time, and is drawn into the feminist movement. She starts reading pamphlets, and will eventually write her own. From her dive into feminist readings, we get this gem of furious feminist rhetoric:
“Spit on Hegel. Spit on the culture of men, spit on Marx, on Engels, on Lenin. And on historical materialism. And on Freud. And on psychoanalysis and penis envy. And on marriage, on family. And on Nazism, on Stalinism, on terrorism. And on war. And on the class struggle. And on the dictatorship of the proletariat. And on socialism. And on Communism. And on the trap of equality. And on all the manifestations of patriarchal culture. And on all its institutional forms. Resist the waste of female intelligence. Deculturate. Disacculturate, starting with maternity, don’t give children to anyone. Get rid of the master-slave dialectic. Rip inferiority from our brains. Restore women to themselves. Don’t create antitheses. Move on another plane in the name of one’s own difference. The university doesn’t free women but completes their repression. Against wisdom. While men devote themselves to undertakings in space, life for women on this planet has yet to begin. Woman is the other face of the earth. Woman is the Unpredictable Subject. Free oneself from subjection here, now, in this present.”
With passages such as those, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay is the most political book thus far in the series. I do like political novels as long as they don't sacrifice the integrity of characters. And I appreciated the overtly feminist narrative that describes how Elena becomes involved in the movement which leads to the eventual awakening and re-assertion of her self by the end of the book. But the fact is that I prefer the first and second books, and I'd like to understand why. They are also feminist, but not because the characters are involved in the movement itself, but because of what the books are in themselves: serious, beautifully crafted literature written by a woman who explores the minds and desires of two young women. Maybe what's holding me back from liking Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay as much is simply where Elena is at in her life in this novel; her experience of a troubled marriage, being in her thirties, having children, which of course doesn't speak to me as deeply as the story of a young woman forging her identity told in the first two novels. Perhaps I'm not in the right place in my life right now to connect to or really appreciate this book completely. I might need to read it ten years from now and see if I like it better then the second and first book at that point. (Then again, I sincerely hope a joyless marriage is something that I will never have first-hand experience of).
I do agree adulthood can be a bummer. So maybe a realistic portrayal has to be a bummer? It seems like the deadening nature of the first part of the book is due in part to Elena's attempt to accept adulthood, responsibilities, and realities. She reasons: “I said to myself that maturity consisted in accepting the turn that existence had taken without getting too upset, following a path between daily practices and theoretical achievements, learning to see oneself, know oneself, in expectation of great changes.” Lila too has undergone this realization when she says: “In the fairy tales one does as one wants, and in reality one does what one can.” What Elena chooses to do at the end of the book, is her refusal to believe that adulthood necessarily means the death of happiness, fantasy. I mean, I doubt it'll turn out well, but I don't blame her.
Also, I'm not so livid about Nino as I was before, Yes, he's a terrible person-- but I'm choosing to view him more as a narrative device than as a character. Elena says of him: "Even though I had known him forever, he was made of dreams..." It seems that Nino arrives at the end of every book in order to propel Elena into reflection, action. We're relieved from the stifling nature of the narrative of Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay once he reappears, because he makes Elena feel joy and color again. Yes, he's awful, but he's also a childhood fantasy more than a person, a figure that inspires and stimulates Elena, so I am not throwing this series at the wall just yet because he's always turning up, .
Anyhow, I'm off to reading the fourth book.
3.5 stars
I'm conflicted about Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. It's probably technically as good as the other books, but the narrative is also so intentionally depressing and stifling that it makes it hard to effortlessly enjoy. When the novel opens, it seems that Elena has finally achieved happiness after years of struggle: she's graduated from university, she's published her novel, she's about to be married, she's leaving Naples.
But it all turns to ash in her mouth, our mouths. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise. Depressing as it is, happiness is not so easily achievable, and it doesn't materialize just because you've checked off a list of accomplishments. Elena soon realizes that marriage is a prison, a contract that binds her to housework and children. Her husband doesn't support or appreciate her intellectual abilities; he prefers her to stay at home and be submissive. A dismaying turn of events, to be sure.
I suppose Ferrante could've written about a happy marriage, but what conflict would there be for Elena then? And I suppose it's happened often enough that it's a truth that needs to be told: the story of a brilliant woman married to a man who doesn't deserve her, expected to take care of the duties of wife and mother to the point that she has no freedom to pursue her own desires and thoughts. A woman who's more talented than the man she's married to, but it's only he who gets to study, work, publish, and garner respect. This is the story of countless women married to male academics and artists. Reading about Elena's situation, once again I was reminded of Sylvia Plath. One of the most brilliant poets of the 20th century, and her second-rate poet of a husband had her to do most of the chores.
Amongst housework and children, Elena begins to write another novel, a socio-political book in which she would: “leave behind me what Franco had called petty love affairs and write something suited to a time of demonstrations, violent deaths, police repression, fears of a coup d’état." I wonder if this is the meta commentary of what Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay is supposed to be in comparison to the previous book, Story of a New Name. Certainly this novel is broader in scope, the first section dedicated to narrating the turbulent political scene of Italy, the social upheaval and transition in the years 1968-1976. The problem is that even as Elena admits that she's losing touch with people in Naples and what's going on in the world because of the suffocating nature of being a mother and wife, this benching of Elena means that we hear of all these events secondhand. The narrative loses immediacy; we're reduced to reporting of facts. Of course, I still appreciate learning about it, and I know Elena's distance and inaction was a conscious choice by Ferrante-- but it still made it less satisfying to read about.
This second novel Elena completes is a failure, so she gives up writing for a time, and is drawn into the feminist movement. She starts reading pamphlets, and will eventually write her own. From her dive into feminist readings, we get this gem of furious feminist rhetoric:
“Spit on Hegel. Spit on the culture of men, spit on Marx, on Engels, on Lenin. And on historical materialism. And on Freud. And on psychoanalysis and penis envy. And on marriage, on family. And on Nazism, on Stalinism, on terrorism. And on war. And on the class struggle. And on the dictatorship of the proletariat. And on socialism. And on Communism. And on the trap of equality. And on all the manifestations of patriarchal culture. And on all its institutional forms. Resist the waste of female intelligence. Deculturate. Disacculturate, starting with maternity, don’t give children to anyone. Get rid of the master-slave dialectic. Rip inferiority from our brains. Restore women to themselves. Don’t create antitheses. Move on another plane in the name of one’s own difference. The university doesn’t free women but completes their repression. Against wisdom. While men devote themselves to undertakings in space, life for women on this planet has yet to begin. Woman is the other face of the earth. Woman is the Unpredictable Subject. Free oneself from subjection here, now, in this present.”
With passages such as those, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay is the most political book thus far in the series. I do like political novels as long as they don't sacrifice the integrity of characters. And I appreciated the overtly feminist narrative that describes how Elena becomes involved in the movement which leads to the eventual awakening and re-assertion of her self by the end of the book. But the fact is that I prefer the first and second books, and I'd like to understand why. They are also feminist, but not because the characters are involved in the movement itself, but because of what the books are in themselves: serious, beautifully crafted literature written by a woman who explores the minds and desires of two young women. Maybe what's holding me back from liking Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay as much is simply where Elena is at in her life in this novel; her experience of a troubled marriage, being in her thirties, having children, which of course doesn't speak to me as deeply as the story of a young woman forging her identity told in the first two novels. Perhaps I'm not in the right place in my life right now to connect to or really appreciate this book completely. I might need to read it ten years from now and see if I like it better then the second and first book at that point. (Then again, I sincerely hope a joyless marriage is something that I will never have first-hand experience of).
I do agree adulthood can be a bummer. So maybe a realistic portrayal has to be a bummer? It seems like the deadening nature of the first part of the book is due in part to Elena's attempt to accept adulthood, responsibilities, and realities. She reasons: “I said to myself that maturity consisted in accepting the turn that existence had taken without getting too upset, following a path between daily practices and theoretical achievements, learning to see oneself, know oneself, in expectation of great changes.” Lila too has undergone this realization when she says: “In the fairy tales one does as one wants, and in reality one does what one can.” What Elena chooses to do at the end of the book,
Spoiler
leaving Pietro for NinoAlso, I'm not so livid about Nino as I was before,
Spoiler
or her decision to have an affair with him.Spoiler
or because of their relationship, ill-fated as it probably isAnyhow, I'm off to reading the fourth book.
cyndireadsbooks's review against another edition
I'm torn on how to rate this book because I loved the first two books. Loved them. But this one was often times a chore to finish and I'm hoping there is payoff in the last volume.
While all of the books are about big issues, in this book the characters themselves are fighting for and about so many -isms: feminism, fascism, sexism, etc. It's intentional and not just thematic in this book and I found it a little heavy handed. More than anything this book is just so incredibly long and boring. Everyone is hateful, the mundane is spelled out in day by day repetition, and the relationship between the two women barely has center stage (although it's never far off in their motivation). Another reviewer suggested that this was perhaps intentional to give the reader a sense of the ennui Elena feels in her marriage. That's giving a lot of credit to the author and assuming a lot of tolerance by the reader.
It picked up considerably in the very end, although not in a direction I wanted to see. We are left with not exactly a cliffhanger but not a resolution. There were many instances where incidental events in book one became plot points here, so I'm sure those loose ends will be wrapped up in the end. I'll leave it unrated for now because I'm too close and I think I need to see how it fits into the overall arc of the story. These are definitely not stand alone books that can be read out of order.
While all of the books are about big issues, in this book the characters themselves are fighting for and about so many -isms: feminism, fascism, sexism, etc. It's intentional and not just thematic in this book and I found it a little heavy handed. More than anything this book is just so incredibly long and boring. Everyone is hateful, the mundane is spelled out in day by day repetition, and the relationship between the two women barely has center stage (although it's never far off in their motivation). Another reviewer suggested that this was perhaps intentional to give the reader a sense of the ennui Elena feels in her marriage. That's giving a lot of credit to the author and assuming a lot of tolerance by the reader.
It picked up considerably in the very end, although not in a direction I wanted to see. We are left with not exactly a cliffhanger but not a resolution. There were many instances where incidental events in book one became plot points here, so I'm sure those loose ends will be wrapped up in the end. I'll leave it unrated for now because I'm too close and I think I need to see how it fits into the overall arc of the story. These are definitely not stand alone books that can be read out of order.
eeliee's review against another edition
4.0
je trouve la structure et l'ambiance du livre totalement différente des deux premiers : une centaine de pages centrées sur lenù, une centaine de pages centrées sur lila et puis quand elena part vivre à florence il y a une rupture tellement nette que ça m'a un peu bloqué dans ma lecture pendant deux semaines ??
avant cette rupture, c'était fantastique, le politique des deux premiers tomes qui s'analysait à travers le quartier et ses habitants explose pour s'adapter à tout le pays, la lutte armée, les camarades, les fascistes. mais ensuite le récit est centré sur la vie de couple entre lenù et pietro, puis sa vie de famille, c'est lourd et oppressant, elle ne sait pas quoi faire, elle fait du surplace, elle suffoque et moi aussi!!!!!!!!
la rupture aussi au niveau des relations avec les gens que quartier, dont on a des nouvelles que par quelques visites, des coups de téléphone et des unes de journaux et surtout le fait que la relation entre elena et lila est bcp bcp moins au premier plan. le truc c'est que je suis tiraillé entre secouer lenù pour lui dire de se barrer et ne plus penser à personne et lui dire de revenir pour tout brûler
les autres personnages, anciens ou nouveaux, ont donc beaucoup de place pour eux, pour le meilleur (adele, mariarosa) et pour le pire (pietro, nino). et j'ai adoré le fait que lenù s'intéresse à la littérature féministe, qu'elle essaie d'aborder le concept de sororité et j'ai hâte de voir ce que va donner le livre qu'elle écrit!!!
bref j'ai dit lenù trop de fois dans la review, la fin du livre m'a fait hurlé et j'ai dû déchirer mon t-shirt plusieurs fois. j'arrive pas à me dire que le prochain tome soit le dernier, j'aurais voulu que ça se termine jamais
avant cette rupture, c'était fantastique, le politique des deux premiers tomes qui s'analysait à travers le quartier et ses habitants explose pour s'adapter à tout le pays, la lutte armée, les camarades, les fascistes. mais ensuite le récit est centré sur la vie de couple entre lenù et pietro, puis sa vie de famille, c'est lourd et oppressant, elle ne sait pas quoi faire, elle fait du surplace, elle suffoque et moi aussi!!!!!!!!
la rupture aussi au niveau des relations avec les gens que quartier, dont on a des nouvelles que par quelques visites, des coups de téléphone et des unes de journaux et surtout le fait que la relation entre elena et lila est bcp bcp moins au premier plan. le truc c'est que je suis tiraillé entre secouer lenù pour lui dire de se barrer et ne plus penser à personne et lui dire de revenir pour tout brûler
les autres personnages, anciens ou nouveaux, ont donc beaucoup de place pour eux, pour le meilleur (adele, mariarosa) et pour le pire (pietro, nino). et j'ai adoré le fait que lenù s'intéresse à la littérature féministe, qu'elle essaie d'aborder le concept de sororité et j'ai hâte de voir ce que va donner le livre qu'elle écrit!!!
bref j'ai dit lenù trop de fois dans la review, la fin du livre m'a fait hurlé et j'ai dû déchirer mon t-shirt plusieurs fois. j'arrive pas à me dire que le prochain tome soit le dernier, j'aurais voulu que ça se termine jamais
alittlenutmeg's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
novelspirits's review against another edition
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
jeseshat's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
tliisa's review against another edition
emotional
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25