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A review by emmaisnotavampire
Storia di chi fugge e di chi resta by Elena Ferrante
emotional
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? Yes
4.25
I know I utterly failed with the two previous reviews, but I swear this time I’ll actually keep this short, otherwise if I don’t learn to I’ll forever delay writing reviews because it takes too much time and effort to transcribe my endless yapping about the books I read. I’ll try and capture the essence of what stuck with me the most.
This, despite not being my favourite in the saga, is definitely the book that affected me and changed me the most, the point where the switch happened and I started treating Ferrante’s characters as equivalent to Kantian categories for interpretation and understanding of the outside world. It made me understand things I am yet to live, it showed me the disappointment and disillusionment that pervade adulthood, marriage, career and so on, stating loud and clear that life is just as complicated when you grow up, that drama doesn’t end the day you settle down.
I am most thankful to this book for acting as the missing link between my mother and I, for making me realise that deep down a girl is just like a woman and a woman just like a girl, for filling the gap between the age I am and the age she was when I first got to know her. For explaining womanhood, for explaining men, and how the latter mess with the first. For painting the metamorphic picture of the woman I could become in overlap with the one my mother might have been, for clearing up things I thought confused, choices I thought pointless. If my favourite thing about the earlier novels was feeling understood, I now discovered the added bonus of feeling like I understand someone else, and sometimes that’s almost equally as great.
What I don’t thank it for - or rather, what my boyfriend probably would not thank it for, as I am perfectly content in my visceral misandry - is destroying my faith in men, but honestly I think it’s nothing but good that, alongside Elena’s realisation, I was also brought back to the already existing awareness of how unfair things are between them and us.
Maybe I’m exaggerating, maybe not everything is about the patriarchy… although, really? To me it seems like it is.
This, despite not being my favourite in the saga, is definitely the book that affected me and changed me the most, the point where the switch happened and I started treating Ferrante’s characters as equivalent to Kantian categories for interpretation and understanding of the outside world. It made me understand things I am yet to live, it showed me the disappointment and disillusionment that pervade adulthood, marriage, career and so on, stating loud and clear that life is just as complicated when you grow up, that drama doesn’t end the day you settle down.
I am most thankful to this book for acting as the missing link between my mother and I, for making me realise that deep down a girl is just like a woman and a woman just like a girl, for filling the gap between the age I am and the age she was when I first got to know her. For explaining womanhood, for explaining men, and how the latter mess with the first. For painting the metamorphic picture of the woman I could become in overlap with the one my mother might have been, for clearing up things I thought confused, choices I thought pointless. If my favourite thing about the earlier novels was feeling understood, I now discovered the added bonus of feeling like I understand someone else, and sometimes that’s almost equally as great.
What I don’t thank it for - or rather, what my boyfriend probably would not thank it for, as I am perfectly content in my visceral misandry - is destroying my faith in men, but honestly I think it’s nothing but good that, alongside Elena’s realisation, I was also brought back to the already existing awareness of how unfair things are between them and us.
Maybe I’m exaggerating, maybe not everything is about the patriarchy… although, really? To me it seems like it is.