A review by clem
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante

5.0

This is my favourite book in the series so far; the political commentary is absolutely searing, and it feels like the first two novels were truly building to this point. Ferrante exposes the hypocrisy of the educated upper middle class’s socialist activism excluding and even harming those they claim to liberate. And as Elena struggles to live up to the hype of her first book in the wake of motherhood and domestic duty, she develops a true political consciousness not based on regurgitating others’ opinions. This series has always brilliantly explored how women’s minds are so often wasted, nowhere more explicitly than in this novel.