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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I find this book to be both a slog to get through and also really beautiful in parts. There’s practically no story to be found but the author writes these characters in a way that’s so compelling, I still had to continue. I didn’t realise that this was the first book of a series, had I known that I may not have started. The ending being so abrupt made me feel robbed of all the time I had invested, but also sort of blown away.
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
so much happened and yet absolutely nothing happened
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Well, I was all coming-of-aged out but it didn’t stop me from finally jumping on this bandwagon, Elena Ferrante you legend, let’s goooooo.
The first book in the Neapolitan Quartet kicks off just outside 1950s Naples and primarily covers the childhood and adolescence of Lenu and Lila, who are mostly just typical girls and also insufferable. Childhood adventures abound and the girlhood of it all permeates the otherwise impoverished and violent world they learn to navigate. Girlhood is a trip that I don’t know how most of us get through, tbh. The entire mean girl industrial complex is hard enough, but they also have to deal with school, family, and the neverending machismo of boys (and men).
There is a complexity and messiness to the friendships between girls that I think Ferrante tries to get at. Lenu and Lila aren’t always the nicest to each other, realistically so. Envy shifts from one to the other multiple times throughout this short period of their lives, and they always seem in competition with each other. If one gets their period or a boyfriend or good grades, the other is left to contend with wanting to be happy for the other while also cultivating their own self-hatred for not achieving the same things. I was nervous when Carmela, the dreaded third girl, came on the scene, as it can often, at that age, be a death sentence for a friendship between two girls.
“But nothing that we had before our eyes every day, or that could be seen if we clambered up the hill, impressed us. Trained by our schoolbooks to speak with great skill about what we had never seen, we were excited by the invisible.”
One day, in an iconic scene, the girls decide to skip school and travel to the sea, and the decisions made that day change Lenu’s opinion of Lila. No one ever is as they seem to our kid selves, and throughout this story, we learn this of the girls. Lenu is a smart, independent thinker and proves herself through her studies, but she is often perceived as more of a side character who won’t amount to much. Lila is perceived and acts more mature for her age, and this is far from reality. Part of the path to adulthood is finding out someone is not exactly who you thought they were, and it is a hard blow that day, for Lenu.
“She was suffering , and I didn’t like her sorrow. I preferred her when she was different from me, distant from my anxieties. And the uneasiness that the discovery of her fragility brought me was transformed by secret pathways into a need of my own to be superior.”
They stick together though, more solid than anything else in the book, even as we hurtle to what seems like an inevitable end. Lenu’s acknowledgement that yes, she wants Lila to be different when Lila is being too much the same as her is still saying, I don’t like how you are right now, but I still want you here. The intimacy in girls’ friendships is what keeps them together.
“I feel no nostalgia for our childhood: it was full of violence.”
In contrast to the innocence of girlhood is the normalized violence that takes place all day every day, usually at the hands of men. There is an early scene where Llia throws Lenu’s doll down a drain, but it pales in comparison with what these men do daily. The men in this book are a traditional mess. Violent, angry, jealous. They take up all the space and oxygen so the women have no choice but to remain adjacent to them. Patriarchy is a violence, whether the women are forced into marriage, jobs, or other roles. The girls are born into this and accept it, but it makes their intimacy even more so the beating heart of this town. Love prevailing through destruction.
I sense I’ll like the later books more than this one, I think I’m truly just burnt out on reading these adolescent, coming-of-age stories. Looking forward to following these bitches through adulthood, but what I really need is a picture of those Cerullo shoes.
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Beautiful storytelling and rich characters - but I was very bored and disinterested in the first half. It read to me very Jane Austen-like. I liked the second half much more (maybe it was the 3x speed that made the boredom less salient). Lila seems larger than life. Lenu feels much more relatable. Very compelling depiction of growing up and being a girl, poverty, and education. The story is very faithful to the friendship at its core. It does not become about a love interest; the love interests are side shows.
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes