A review by chirson
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
4.0
I think my experience of reading these novels might not be the majority experience - I don't identify with the central relationship between the two friends, and while I find it utterly compelling, it doesn't hit my buttons too much. I appreciate it a lot, but it doesn't seem to touch me.
What does touch me is the descriptions of mental states, internal experiences that go with inferiority complexes, with class anxiety, with poverty. Everything connected with education and the desire to live a bigger life that clashes with external conditions.
Lila is such an amazing character: reading how her staggering curiosity, her mental capacity, only makes her more aware of the cage she's in is claustrophobic. I can't help but compare her story with my grandmothers', who were the same generation, but in Poland - and realise how much worse they could have had it (and yet how similar their struggles must have been). My maternal grandmother was a reader, and she saved up to go to university to study literature, but ended up quitting before the end of her first semester because money ran out and her family refused to support her - she was better off married. Still, she was better off married in her twenties, not in her teens.
My other grandmother married an older man. She divorced him at some point, which I suppose strongly suggests abuse - why else would someone get a divorce around here in the 1970s and yet not enter a second marriage.
The utter inaccessibility of education and knowledge in the Naples of the novel is horrifying to me. As far as I know, newspapers were read broadly in Poland at the time, after all. I suppose it might be interesting to compare Elena, unaware of who's in charge of her country and what the geopolitical history is, with the youth of today, who have news outlets at their fingertips (and sometimes use them but often don't).
I found this novel compelling and yet gruelling. I managed to read only a few chapters at a time, to avoid feeling overwhelmed by the grimness of the world it describes, especially knowing that some of it changes, but so much remains.
What does touch me is the descriptions of mental states, internal experiences that go with inferiority complexes, with class anxiety, with poverty. Everything connected with education and the desire to live a bigger life that clashes with external conditions.
Lila is such an amazing character: reading how her staggering curiosity, her mental capacity, only makes her more aware of the cage she's in is claustrophobic. I can't help but compare her story with my grandmothers', who were the same generation, but in Poland - and realise how much worse they could have had it (and yet how similar their struggles must have been). My maternal grandmother was a reader, and she saved up to go to university to study literature, but ended up quitting before the end of her first semester because money ran out and her family refused to support her - she was better off married. Still, she was better off married in her twenties, not in her teens.
My other grandmother married an older man. She divorced him at some point, which I suppose strongly suggests abuse - why else would someone get a divorce around here in the 1970s and yet not enter a second marriage.
The utter inaccessibility of education and knowledge in the Naples of the novel is horrifying to me. As far as I know, newspapers were read broadly in Poland at the time, after all. I suppose it might be interesting to compare Elena, unaware of who's in charge of her country and what the geopolitical history is, with the youth of today, who have news outlets at their fingertips (and sometimes use them but often don't).
I found this novel compelling and yet gruelling. I managed to read only a few chapters at a time, to avoid feeling overwhelmed by the grimness of the world it describes, especially knowing that some of it changes, but so much remains.