Pleease read "My Brilliant Friend" trilogy and keep in mind that it gets better and better and better and better as you turn each page. These aren't mine. It's a slow burn with Ferrante. The best parts of this book were when Lila returned. Did she luck out as an author in having such a compelling brilliant friend or is she an inspired invention of Ferrante’s? It doesn’t really matter but I was curious. But Elena is believable enough in this moment. Ferrante writes well about Elena’s initiation into university life, the Milan literati, Italian political unrest, about marriage, child rearing, and infidelity but not markedly better than lots of other writers. “We would have written together, we would have been authors together, we would have drawn power from each other, we would have fought shoulder to shoulder. i am currently having major angst. All I can say is brilliant book/writing and I recommend it. They are just a self-absorbed bunch consumed by petty jealousies and strange alliances. The men in Lila’s life—kind Enzo, irresponsible yet brilliant Nino—spend more time with her than Elena does. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay is the story of a furious friendship, and the internal violence suffered by two women set against the turbulent landscape of a fractured Italy…this is a woman's story told with such truthfulness that it is not so much a life observed as it is felt. In Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, the two protagonists are now in their 30's. The secondary and tertiary characters lack some depth because of the nearly obsessive focus on the two protagonists. Whoever is faltering in the given moment chases the other down to beg for her support, yet every conversation is inevitably tense, full of bluffing, accusations, and denials, because the balance of power could shift at any moment—a new reversal is often lurking just around the following corner of the sentence. After reading over 1000 pages in this trilogy, I am unable to find even one sympathetic character. The reader is ransacked and steps back into the world gingerly, with lingering questions about estrangement and belonging. In the fairy tales one does as one wants, and in reality one does what one can.”, http://www.europaeditions.com/book.php?Id=290, BTBA Best Translated Book Award Nominee for Fiction Shortlist (2015), Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Fiction (2015), Any men out there reading this? Why does Lenu think Lina and her are equal partners? Through her, Ferrante has also broken through a wall of sorts, and though there is a tone of bitterness throughout the novel, it closes in a fire of triumphant exultation, not merely “fleeing” but taking flight. “Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay” reflects on the difference between doing and thinking. THOSE WHO LEAVE AND THOSE WHO STAY From the Neapolitan Novels series , Vol. I finished this today, the day Elena Ferrante’s identity has reportedly been revealed. One woman is always leaving the other behind, or, rather, “fleeing” her, as the original “fugge” of the Italian title puts it. Perhaps this is a cry of recognition, too: seeing embodied the death of all women in history, for it is this pain of the womb-bearers that she is to retell in the coming pages. font-family: "Brandon-Text-Regular"; Click to read more about Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante. In the end, this is not a novel that, like Middlemarch, bows its head to the stuffy dictates and disappointments of provincial life. I confess I feel a bit guilty now because while reading this there were several times I found myself wishing I knew how much was fiction and how much autobiography. Ferrante has said in an interview that she studied classics at university, and there are few living writers, female or male, to rival her for an epic hand. and a little twitchy. Like Middlemarch, Those Who Leave also has a kind implacability, like an Old Testament flood sweeping through the plains of human experience, drenching anyone who would dare to call it mere “women’s literature.”. It is the third book in Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels series, which chronicles the friendship between two women—Elena Greco and Raffaella "Lila" Cerullo—from childhood to old age in a poor neighborhood of Naples, Italy. The same thing could be said of Elena Ferrante’s rich, engrossing, gloriously uncompromising third book in the bestselling Neapolitan series, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Book) : Ferrante, Elena : Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, the first of the Neapolitan novels, Elena Ferrante's fame as one of our most compelling, insightful, and stylish contemporary authors has grown enormously. Hong Kong's democracy activists face two choices and neither are easy. Summary. border-bottom: 3px solid #000; How did things got this messy and dirtier? An older Elena walks down a street with Lila, the great friend of her youth. I am completely and utterly spellbound, bewitched. Elena herself is walled off by her husband, the distracted and unappreciative Pietro, and only realizes, years into her marriage, that the confinement of womanhood has separated her from Lila, forcing them to compete for male attention. This author certainly knows how to write a family saga. Elena ruminates on having dinner with Nino and how empty she feels once he has left. As I read this series it feels like it's based on reality. This book is a slow burn. From the author of My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name, comes the third novel in the series, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. Of course you have to rush out and get book four immediately. Those who leave, and those who stay. So I couldn’t help wondering if Lila, Ferrante’s muse, is a real person. Cue me rolling my eyes repeatedly through this entire section of the book, [her youngest sister becomes involved with one of the Solara brothers. In this book Lenù grows up, and suddenly Ferrante's meandering internal monologues swing into orbit around the twin poles of SEX and POLITICS. Elena and Lila collide and spin away, only to orbit again into each other’s hearts. Those who love these books- go for them. Summarized by summa-bot. “Each of us narrates our life as it suits us.”, “You see? The narrator is Elena Greco, the brilliant writer who still struggles with her place in the world. } In Volume One, I am barreling through Ferrante books and loving them. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Book) : Ferrante, Elena : Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, the first of the Neapolitan novels, Elena Ferrante's fame as one of our most compelling, insightful, and stylish contemporary authors has grown enormously. [ to leave her husband and move in with a man who has loved her since she was a child (but never have sex with him). They're all such insufferable self obsessed arseholes who are hideous to each other and completely self involved. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of, Published Ferrante, still writing from Lenu's point of view, shows us what happens to those who leave nd those who stay. In Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, the third Neapolitan novel, Elena and Lila, the two girls whom readers first met in My Brilliant Friend, have become women. From the beginning, the reading of Ferrante has been a visceral experience. This despite the fact that most of the characters are not very nice people. “I was the only one talking, I remember: she was humming, she greeted people who didn’t respond, the rare times she interrupted me she uttered only exclamations, without any evident relation to what I was saying.” They are led to see the corpse of a woman they used to know, and while Lila’s reaction is characteristically cold, Elena cries. /* ----------------------------------------- */. LibraryThing is a cataloging and social networking site for booklovers Her four-book series of Neapolitan Novels are her most widely known works. Elena has left the neighborhood, earned her college degree, and published a successful novel, all of which have opened the doors to a world of learned interlocutors and richly furnished salons. 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