risemini's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Infidelity, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Miscarriage, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Sexual harassment, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Toxic friendship, Vomit, Violence, Toxic relationship, Alcohol, Grief, Misogyny, War, Blood, Confinement, Death, Abandonment, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, and Rape
nadiaherondale's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I enjoyed this one quite more than the first one, maybe It's cause I'm already invested on the characters or maybe it was the pacing. Once again we submerged ourselves into Lenu and Lina's world of violence, poverty and money (a central theme on this one specially), friendship and the hardships of being female. Nino Sarratore is exactly the kind of man I hate (pretends to be the good stuff and it's actually the worst of all) and the ending gave me chills, just when I thought Lenu was out of reach. At some points of the story I hated Lina with passion, I think it's just what the author intended since it's supposed to be Lenu's narrative and her feelings strongly bleed into the writing, and I actually loved that. All in all I'm excited to keep the series and see what we get ourselves into on the next one, now that both Elena and Lila seem to have escaped the neighborhood up to some point.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Domestic abuse, Violence, Toxic friendship, Infidelity, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Adult/minor relationship, Sexual harassment, Sexism, and Physical abuse
Moderate: Death of parent, Infertility, Miscarriage, Body shaming, and Classism
yumaa's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic relationship
Moderate: Infidelity, Abortion, Violence, Suicide, Sexual violence, Rape, Physical abuse, Miscarriage, Mental illness, Domestic abuse, Death of parent, Blood, and Adult/minor relationship
kell_xavi's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Picking up from the very scene that dramatically closes My Brilliant Friend, this novel charts marriages, businesses, schooling, holidays, love affairs, a good deal of domestic violence, betrayals, sexual beginnings, lies, kindnesses, pregnancies, and changes with Elena (Lenu), Lila, and the neighbourhood in Naples at the centre of an ever-expanding world. Where the first book follows the two girls from ages 7-16, The Story of a New Name tells the story of a similar time span, ages 16-24.
Lila is hot-headed, distant, abrupt, creative, listless, passionate, quickly moving between big emotions and a sense of dissociation, with a growing anxiety about the framework of her life and the expansiveness of the world around her. She has a difficulty with uncertainty, trying to hold on or shape things until she understands them, at which point she can accept any new development. She is brave around the men who appear to lose body and fall to pieces before her, she is sensitive to pregnancy and to certain locations, she is resolute and sometimes, exhausted, she is easily moved.
Harder to capture is Lenu, our narrator. There are times when she explains the events of her life aside from Lila’s, at different jobs, with boyfriends, at school and new cities, and once she writes that these experiences are seen again, anew, when she imagines her friend in the same scenes and places. Lenu’s convictions, stubbornness, keen observation, careful responsiveness, are all elements of her character that strengthen as she moves from the familiarity of her poor streets to the intelligence and cultivation of high school, of Nino and his friends, as she grows into the educated, modern, refined classes of Italy. These traits are also ones that allowed her to be friends with Lila, to follow her as children, to take risks, to work hard for herself, to develop the creativity and toughness that underlie her trajectory to adulthood.
Lila and Lenu are both spirited, smart, and independent. They face so much anguish and pain, but they’re both so often alone with their minds, unable to tell each other the truth.
Yes, yes, let me be punished for my insufficiency. Let the worst happen, something so devastating that it will prevent me from facing tonight, tomorrow, the hours and days to come, reminding me with always more crushing evidence of my unsuitable constitution.
Ferrante both cares for these characters and allows them volition, volatility, forays into melodrama and a dignified, or nervous, or demanding womanhood on the other side of experimental choices and their torments.
I considered her happy, with that tempestuous happiness of novels, films, and comic strips. The only kind that, at that time, truly interested me. That is to say, no conjugal happiness, but the happiness of passion, a furious confusion of evil and good that had befallen her, and not me.
They’re often seen with distance, hostility, or misplaced desire by others, fighting to inhabit similar spaces until they find separate niches and fight to prove their own the greater success and assuredness.
In the past, there had been Lila, a continuous happy detour into surprising lands. Now, everything I was, I wanted to get from myself. I was almost nineteen. I would never again depend on someone, and I would never again miss someone.
I wasn’t immediately lost within this book, in part because of the immediate ironing out of the shocking kink in the fabric of Lila’s marriage that we conclude the previous book with. Much of the beginning is stage-setting, with a few remarkable moments of friendship and Lila’s artistic endeavour to destroy or disappear herself. The domesticity and high school stories were less captivating than I hoped for, and it didn’t pick up intensity again until the final days of a summer on Ischia. The breakage, often, is an occasion for brightness in Ferrante’s stories.
Ferrante writes with a depth and realism that washes over everything, making sharp and kinetic the gossip of women; making smooth and dry the blunt scene of a sexual encounter; making warm and heady a follow-through to freedom. There is so much emotion, so much anger and love and shame and fear in these pages.
She was explaining to me that… in the world, there is nothing to win, that her life was as full of varied and foolish adventures as much as mine, and that time simply slipped away without any meaning, and it was good just to see each other every so often, to hear the mad sound of the brain of one echo in the mad sound in the brain of the other.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse and Infidelity
Moderate: Suicide, War, Miscarriage, Physical abuse, Pedophilia, Mental illness, and Pregnancy
Minor: Cursing, Death of parent, and Adult/minor relationship
fascisma178's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
inspiring
reflective
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? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Suicide, and Violence
Moderate: Death of parent, Rape, and Death
karenaerts's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
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
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Rape, Toxic relationship, and Toxic friendship
Moderate: Cancer, Death, Death of parent, Dementia, Violence, Suicide, Sexual content, and Miscarriage
girlsownthevoid's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-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
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Infidelity, Toxic friendship, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Sexism, Sexual assault, Adult/minor relationship, Domestic abuse, Gaslighting, Rape, and Suicide
Minor: Death, Death of parent, Dementia, and Miscarriage
boy_topics's review against another edition
dark
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
This book became tedious to me after a while. I was tired of the same storyline repeating itself over and over again. Lila and Elena are stuck in a cycle that repeats and again and again. I got bored and sad. The ending is a HUGE cliffhanger and truthfully I can't believe that this story continues for another two books. At the same time, I do love Ferrante's writing and I'm quite attached to the characters at this point. I need to know what happens but I'll be taking a break before moving onto the third book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Grief, Hate crime, Infidelity, Infertility, Mental illness, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, and Violence
nothingforpomegranted's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
This follow-up to My Brilliant Friend picks up right where we left off with Elena/Lenu and Lina/Lila. Now married to Stefano, Lila has become Signora Caracci, the ferocity of her childhood subsumed by domesticity. The tension in the marriage becomes immediately obvious, intensifying the relationships of the entire neighborhood. Brothers- and sisters-in-law, lovers, fiancés and mothers, employees and bosses and children: the interactions between characters are myriad, and to see the dynamics from Elena's myopic, obsessive perspective is both chilling and enthralling.
As Lina explores her new identity as wife, she struggles with her relationships to Stefano's family and his stores. Back and forth between the Caracci grocery store and the Cerullo shoe factory, Lina is uncomfortable with her new status, and yet she walks with head held high. Indeed, the only vulnerability we are privy to is her seeming avoidance of Elena, whose desperation not to see her is nearly as powerful as her desperation to be part of every moment of her life. Eventually, of course, Lina begins to thrive, as in all things (at least, by Elena's reporting): she charms customers while cheating them into paying more, supports her husband's family while skimming off the profits to donate to her neighbors, and flirts just enough with everyone to keep them from becoming too distant or too angry.
As it happens, I found this first half of the book to be somewhat dry. I am struck by the fact that even in my summary, I only described Lina's life, letting Elena fade into the background just as she nearly erases herself, and therein lies the terrible beauty of these novels. This friendship is toxic, which only becomes more evident as the book continues, the subtlety of Elena's erasure transforming into Lina's complete overpowering of her friend, just as she has found some strength, confidence and independence.
Elena, still thriving at school, is invited to graduate to university and spends the summer working at a bookstore, until she is cajoled by Lina to join her on a doctor's orders beach vacation to relax her body in preparation for pregnancy. Enthused by the possibility of reuniting with Nino, who Lena has figured herself to be in love with after years at school, mutually impressing each other, she agrees to join them (paid for her time by Lina).
This is where the story really begins, and it is beyond compelling. If the first half of the book was a struggle to get through, the second half was completely immersive, and I finished it in just a couple of hours. Part of what made it so propulsive was how entirely disgusted I was by Lina's actions and Elena's dependence on her. This book was troubling, and I still can't wait to pick up the next in the series.
As Lina explores her new identity as wife, she struggles with her relationships to Stefano's family and his stores. Back and forth between the Caracci grocery store and the Cerullo shoe factory, Lina is uncomfortable with her new status, and yet she walks with head held high. Indeed, the only vulnerability we are privy to is her seeming avoidance of Elena, whose desperation not to see her is nearly as powerful as her desperation to be part of every moment of her life. Eventually, of course, Lina begins to thrive, as in all things (at least, by Elena's reporting): she charms customers while cheating them into paying more, supports her husband's family while skimming off the profits to donate to her neighbors, and flirts just enough with everyone to keep them from becoming too distant or too angry.
As it happens, I found this first half of the book to be somewhat dry. I am struck by the fact that even in my summary, I only described Lina's life, letting Elena fade into the background just as she nearly erases herself, and therein lies the terrible beauty of these novels. This friendship is toxic, which only becomes more evident as the book continues, the subtlety of Elena's erasure transforming into Lina's complete overpowering of her friend, just as she has found some strength, confidence and independence.
Elena, still thriving at school, is invited to graduate to university and spends the summer working at a bookstore, until she is cajoled by Lina to join her on a doctor's orders beach vacation to relax her body in preparation for pregnancy. Enthused by the possibility of reuniting with Nino, who Lena has figured herself to be in love with after years at school, mutually impressing each other, she agrees to join them (paid for her time by Lina).
This is where the story really begins, and it is beyond compelling. If the first half of the book was a struggle to get through, the second half was completely immersive, and I finished it in just a couple of hours. Part of what made it so propulsive was how entirely disgusted I was by Lina's actions and Elena's dependence on her. This book was troubling, and I still can't wait to pick up the next in the series.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content
Minor: Death of parent
More...