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A review by m00dreads
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
challenging
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
This was an uncomfortable read for me, in the absolute best way.
It felt like a disrobing, seeing those unnamed thoughts and sentiments from adolescence so brazenly exposed in concrete language. That amorphous and nascent nebulae of desire and frustration, youthful egocentrism and burgeoning self-loathing, acrid in their intensity and shameful in their seeming lack of rationale—all these Ferrante arranges in artful constellations. Anyone who’s ever had to go through the truly horrifying ordeal of being a teenage girl will find themselves picked apart in these pages; your formative memories flayed to the bone, it’s subtext laid bare.
She’s a master of showing not telling. It’s natural for writers to have a crutch, whether that be a plot, literary device, or a predisposition toward a certain character. However—and please please, take this with a dose of healthy skepticism—I can’t seem to detect hers. There’s no need for histrionics here; no need for pedantic metaphors, florid lyricism, or hackneyed plot maneuvers. Just a profound understanding of narrative and character.
In this second installment, Ferrante hunkers down on identity as it spins through the wringer of teenhood. Lenú and Lila drift ever further apart as their concept of self is put through multiple cycles of deformation and reformation, but their bond is one that transcends even that of the card dealer’s hand. Both find themselves at the threshold of new lives, away from the grit and violence of their Neopolitan neighborhood–one via the ladder of social mobility, the other, a different kind of liberation, one that requires a regression to and a relearning of old material discomforts.
Also goodness, I’ve remarked on this before in my review of My Brilliant Friend, but Ferrante somehow makes the stream of consciousness style propulsive for me. I’m transfixed at these people and their daily drama, their interior lives, the byzantine tangle of their relationships.
I’d say she lost me a bit around the 20-30% mark, hence the half-star deduction. But even to me it felt like a natural ebbing of the tides. After all, no downtime makes for a mentally exhausting read, and with a story as stripping as this, it almost felt like a breath of fresh air. I probably won’t be able to tell you what occurred in that chunk of the book tho, lol.
It felt like a disrobing, seeing those unnamed thoughts and sentiments from adolescence so brazenly exposed in concrete language. That amorphous and nascent nebulae of desire and frustration, youthful egocentrism and burgeoning self-loathing, acrid in their intensity and shameful in their seeming lack of rationale—all these Ferrante arranges in artful constellations. Anyone who’s ever had to go through the truly horrifying ordeal of being a teenage girl will find themselves picked apart in these pages; your formative memories flayed to the bone, it’s subtext laid bare.
She’s a master of showing not telling. It’s natural for writers to have a crutch, whether that be a plot, literary device, or a predisposition toward a certain character. However—and please please, take this with a dose of healthy skepticism—I can’t seem to detect hers. There’s no need for histrionics here; no need for pedantic metaphors, florid lyricism, or hackneyed plot maneuvers. Just a profound understanding of narrative and character.
In this second installment, Ferrante hunkers down on identity as it spins through the wringer of teenhood. Lenú and Lila drift ever further apart as their concept of self is put through multiple cycles of deformation and reformation, but their bond is one that transcends even that of the card dealer’s hand. Both find themselves at the threshold of new lives, away from the grit and violence of their Neopolitan neighborhood–one via the ladder of social mobility, the other, a different kind of liberation, one that requires a regression to and a relearning of old material discomforts.
Also goodness, I’ve remarked on this before in my review of My Brilliant Friend, but Ferrante somehow makes the stream of consciousness style propulsive for me. I’m transfixed at these people and their daily drama, their interior lives, the byzantine tangle of their relationships.
I’d say she lost me a bit around the 20-30% mark, hence the half-star deduction. But even to me it felt like a natural ebbing of the tides. After all, no downtime makes for a mentally exhausting read, and with a story as stripping as this, it almost felt like a breath of fresh air. I probably won’t be able to tell you what occurred in that chunk of the book tho, lol.