Scan barcode
A review by porgyreads
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
5.0
The tumult of emotion EASTENDERS YOU ARE NOTHING.
It’s crazy because for a solid 70% of this novel I despised Lila and yet still I can understand why they end up reconciling. Lenu is consistently there for Lila and it’s not reciprocated in nearly the same way. I could not believe my eyes when Lila and Nino started the affair. I could not believe my eyes with Lenu “fuck his best friend and make them yes men” Ninos FATHER. Dear god that was a chapter I basically read with my eyes closed. The fact that at first she felt some sort of disassociated power from the act. Then time passes and her response (expectedly) swings and she’s so disappointed that she was driven to believe vulnerability was power.
EF describes Lenu’s emotions so viscerally i can’t help but feel everything she’s feeling. Even when I know she’s being dramatic or over sensitive or over thinking the situation.
When she gets the fever I felt feverish. When she saw Lila and Nino kissing for the first time (after resigning herself to becoming a middle man for reciprocated affections she assumed they would never act on) I gaggeddd. When she gets to Pisa gets the rich boyfriend and slowly goes through the same process of erasure that Lila is attempting in her own way with Stefano, the shop, Nino, Rinuccio.
Both women are trapped in these cycles of wanting to erase themselves!!! to erase their shared history with their surroundings. What an interesting concept!!!
Lenu goes THROUGH it this novel my god.
I constantly think about whether Lila was really in love with Nino from that first handshake or if she was being vindictive. And we just NEVER KNOW for all we have of Lila’s diary entries we will never truly know. But then in turn Lila is walking through the several circles of hell, descending further and further.
It’s ridiculous how the plot swings from happiness to disaster and then in hindsight we find out the happiness is perceived or the disaster is actually a blessing? It’s so fantastical that it turns back to perfectly portray the surreal nature of reality.
I watched past lives on Sunday and the concept of nostalgia being wrapped up in a specific relationship - the tethers that we have to others because of their associations with Place (specifically home) - is so prevalent in this book.
It’s terrifying how Naples is resolutely holding both Lila and Elena back (and from each other.)
They manage, in their own ways, to get out for brief periods of time only to feel that magnetic pull towards each other or the village which then brings them back into the toxicity of their friendship and what Naples represents for each of them.
On the sidelines, what EF does with the minor characters portrays such a vivid cycle of violence and generational trauma !!! You become so embroiled with the domestic lives of each couple and their connections/allegiances to each woman before you know it, you’re hit in the face with the fact that somehow, under a completely different set of circumstances, they’re all living in the Before. There is no After. History is not something you can escape.
It’s crazy because for a solid 70% of this novel I despised Lila and yet still I can understand why they end up reconciling. Lenu is consistently there for Lila and it’s not reciprocated in nearly the same way.
EF describes Lenu’s emotions so viscerally i can’t help but feel everything she’s feeling. Even when I know she’s being dramatic or over sensitive or over thinking the situation.
Both women are trapped in these cycles of wanting to erase themselves!!! to erase their shared history with their surroundings. What an interesting concept!!!
Lenu goes THROUGH it this novel my god.
It’s ridiculous how the plot swings from happiness to disaster and then in hindsight we find out the happiness is perceived or the disaster is actually a blessing? It’s so fantastical that it turns back to perfectly portray the surreal nature of reality.
I watched past lives on Sunday and the concept of nostalgia being wrapped up in a specific relationship - the tethers that we have to others because of their associations with Place (specifically home) - is so prevalent in this book.
It’s terrifying how Naples is resolutely holding both Lila and Elena back (and from each other.)
They manage, in their own ways, to get out for brief periods of time only to feel that magnetic pull towards each other or the village which then brings them back into the toxicity of their friendship and what Naples represents for each of them.
On the sidelines, what EF does with the minor characters portrays such a vivid cycle of violence and generational trauma !!! You become so embroiled with the domestic lives of each couple and their connections/allegiances to each woman before you know it, you’re hit in the face with the fact that somehow, under a completely different set of circumstances, they’re all living in the Before. There is no After. History is not something you can escape.