Who By Fire Online Book Group discussion

Many of us in this bookclub have been reading Elena Ferrante and want to discuss her breakthrough writing in _My Brilliant Friend_ and the three connected novels that follow. We'll begin with first in the series. All comments, questions, discussion topics are welcome.

Hi Mary, looking forward to the discussion. :)

Just finished My Brilliant Friend and, of course loved it, loved it! Totally different than the first Ferrante I read, Troubling Love, but fantastic too. It was half way through My Brilliant Friend and realized that Ferrante was moving from first person to third person from chapter to chapter but it's so smooth i didn't even catch on or become confused. Have you encountered this before??

I didn't notice that Krista but it's a good point - perhaps it has to do with the act of telling (Lénu writing down what she remembers of Lila so she won't be erased) and the act of remembering (Lénu caught up in her own memories.) I need to go back and check this out... any particular passage struck you where this move between first person and third person happened?

I was walking to work today, thinking of that part of the novel that takes place on the beach - the "idyllic" summer of youth - and, of course, it was too good to be true and something had to happen at the end to taint it (perhaps foreshadowing the wedding at the end, and also perhaps a note on what's to come in the following novels.)

Looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you!

Olli and Krista, I argue that the novel is told in first person and that the story ultimately will be Elena's, a life, mirrored through Lila's life story. But you are correct: Ferrante craftily gives herself the license to a kind of omniscience that is carefully handled so that all the third person telling could be something she was told or learned from someone else. She does this in _My Brilliant Friend_ on page 23: "I was really angry. We'll see who wins this time, I said to myself. I turned on the computer and began to write—all the details of our story, everything that still remained in my memory."

I saw your message just now Mary - I also believe Elena is a woman, despite the pseudonym. My question to you and Krista (and other women following this thread): did you relate to the intensity of the young friendship? Women in my bookclub said it was very reminiscent of their own childhood, where a friendship with another girl could be very intense one day, and completely cold the next. I think Ferrante does that really well in the novel - though I feel that Lila was always more forgiving and accepting of Lenu than the other way round.

Ollie, yes. i really related to the friendship between them. Ferrante does that so well. She is relentless and brutally honest in exposing the underside of those (hidden) competitions that definitely went on in my childhood and adolescence. (I grew out of it.) I had forgotten them mostly and that is the other thing that impresses me about her. She has such a vivid memory. It all came back to me as i read it though.

Now, is Ferrante a woman? Arg! I wonder why some state that she isn't? Too hard to believe a woman can write that well? It bugs me that we even care. Writers should have the right to be sexless, sort of like how they do those singing competitions where the judges don't see the singer….

Krista wrote: Now, is Ferrante a woman? Arg! I wonder why some state that she isn't? Too hard to believe a woman can write that well? It bugs me that we even care.

Oh I know! And if there was a prominent gay character in the novel, there'd be questions about her sexuality, and so forth. But maybe it's in human nature to be curious and want to place everything in a box. The original reason I was attracted to Elena Ferrante was because of an interview where she stated that her words should be enough - we don't need to know about her private life. I found that so brave in this day and age! And it goes against everything we keep getting told about marketing of an artist. Just imagine if all writers wrote under pseudonyms... wouldn't that level the playing field?!

I too saw that letter Ferrante wrote in defence of her privacy. I very very much relate to that. I would so not be inclined to the public sphere if my writing ever made it anywhere. I really admire her courage and boundary setting and I suppose with writing like that you can get away with it. Look how well her books are selling. I haven't seen anything like it in a long time.

Ursula K. Le Guin on Ferrante:

"I’ve read only the first two books. Found the first absorbing, fascinating, and a terrific study of urban class and gender structure – the social anthropology novel at its best. The second somewhat more predictable but still satisfying, especially the last half. But at the very end of it, the Worthless Prick suddenly pops up again. Oh, no! Is all the interest, all the promise of the protagonists – of the novel itself – to be thrown away on the women-adoring-a-jerk story, the love-as-addiction story? Again? I’ve gone on that nowhere trip with a novel way too often. I’m signing on for this one. Maybe I’ll come back to the third and fourth volumes after a while. Maybe not.

Meanwhile I keep wondering why the mysteriously elusive Elena Ferrante is so mysteriously elusive. Because being mysteriously elusive is great PR, well, sure. But there’s another possibility. The psychological study of two minds, a relationship between two girls growing into women, while brilliant, is entirely in terms originated by and therefore acceptable to men (the central focus of a woman’s life is a man; women can’t and don’t trust other women). The intense competitiveness of the two girls is perfectly plausible, but as the main element of a friendship between women it ceased to convince me; mere rivalry seldom plays the part in women’s lives that it does in many men’s. And then, Lina is such a classic male-dream-woman, the eternal Carmen, magnetically sexy, fiery, holding herself apart from other women but eagerly abasing herself to the male animal…. Women of course write about such women, and often, but seldom at this level of sophistication.

Anyhow, for what it‘s worth, I’m laying no bets on the gender of the coy author."

Ollie!!

Loved reading Ursula's points and they are well taken. I don't disagree, however I am not sure if Le Guin has read Ferrante's first novel, Troubling Love, and if this read might sway her theory a little?

For me, Troubling Love is a far superior read to My Brilliant Friend. There is none of the women not trusting women, women addicted to love, just a lone woman who writes cartoons and has lost her mother. TL seemed to me far more risky writing too. It was so fantastic that at one point I felt like ripping the book in half, just like a reviewer for the New York Times said in his review. I totally understood what he meant. I was experiencing such a sense of awe and crazy over-stimulation midway through reading the book that I became overwhelmed and nearly wanted to cry trying to imagine the brain of this writer. TL is just so … unusual and genius. I was really afraid that it was going to shut down my writing completely because I don't know if I will ever get to that degree of freedom in my writing.

Well I got off my point there, but back to it now. Reading that novel I, at the time, was convinced that Elena Ferrante is a woman. The descriptions of menstruation and cramping and a female sexual experience that are so visceral that I can't imagine writing about it, if one hasn't experienced it.

On Le Guin's point about the intense competitiveness and the friendship/rivalry, I also do not see that this is men's territory only.
I suppose Ferrante could be all sorts of things. She could be a he, or she could be born a he who feels like a she, or vice versa and it could go on and on but I don't think it's impossible that a woman, born a woman, who feels like a woman cannot be drawn into patriarchal mindsets, embody/embrain them and in turn write incredible stories about them. There are many women out there who have the experience of can't and don't trusting other women and when you add in that drive to move beyond a poor and violent childhood, I think it can be that much more intense. That can become a 'thing' between two women absolutely. It is perfectly plausible to me and certainly makes for great tension in a story if one embraces it and brings it to light. I think whatever Ferrante is, she is refreshingly honest.

Krista wrote: "Ollie!!

Loved reading Ursula's points and they are well taken. I don't disagree, however I am not sure if Le Guin has read Ferrante's first novel, Troubling Love, and if this read might sway her ..."

What an insightful, close-to-the page comment. Makes me so want to read _Troubling Love_.

You and Ollie are such gifts to this book club and to my life.

I can't remember who said it, but someone once made a good point (which I agree) that the outsider voice (and that includes women's voices, who were for so very long excluded) learnt very well how to understand and/or mimic the patriarchal voice - from sheer exposure to it.

In "My Brilliant Friend", as we enter this world through the impressions of a young girl, I think it's natural that it will be painted with the male view - after all, that's the world she lived in! I think Ferrante cleverly plays with this in showing the female characters (especially the adult ones) as more remote to the girls than the males. I imagine (hope) that this begins to change as she grows into the adulthood.

A critic for the London Review of Books called the tetralogy "the great Italian novel", exploring Italy's post-war history through the "minutae of women's lives".

Also, the other day I was in a bookshop with my boyfriend and we overheard two young women talking about Ferrante - one of them was telling the other that they'd found out her identity and she's definitely a she. (Then again, can that be trusted...?) :-)

I have two questions for you both (and any other new members joining in!)

1) Is "My Brilliant Friend" a feminist work?

2) Are the shoes Lila designs the novel's McGuffin?

Ollie wrote: "I have two questions for you both (and any other new members joining in!)

1) Is "My Brilliant Friend" a feminist work?

2) Are the shoes Lila designs the novel's McGuffin?"

I will answer the second q., but for now I think the tetralogy is one large novel and can't answer that one until I at the very least finish The Story of a Name.

As to your q. 1: My view is this, Does that matter? Does one ask this q. of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls that takes place largely during a war and all of his novels have a male as the primary character?
Are Jane Austen novels feminist tracts because they deal on one level with women who cannot inherit money? All her novels also deal with ethical questions.

The first Ferrante volume has both emotional weight and intellectual significance on layers and layers of levels.

I see the Lila character as a mirror of a part of Elena whose story I believe this is. It's character driven by I think the most layered of all the characters, the narrator herself. Lila becomes, particularly in what I've read in The Story of a Name, more caricature and less layered, but my view is that reflects on Elena's telling and may not even be totally fair to Lila.

I would love to know what you and anyone else thinks.

One thing is for sure, the Ferrante novels whoever wrote them challenge and challenging fiction that transforms and moves me is what I want in my hands.

Hi Mary and Krista, just heard on the news that these novels will be turned into a TV series (each book will be a "season" of 8 episodes.)

I haven't started reading the second book yet (and still need to post a review of the first!) but I'm wondering: which actors would you cast to play the characters in the first book?

Hey Ollie, I finished reading the second novel on Monday night (see how excited I am about football.. :)
I loved the book. I hope you read it soon so we can talk about it and I CANNOT wait to see the TV series.
Who would they cast? Will this be Italian television with subtitles, or is an English version? I just hope that if it's English, that the actors have authentic Italian accents. I am going to have to google this now. I am so curious.

Mary, re: your comment above about Lila being a mirror of Elena's character. I have had a similar thought. It is as if they are the same person who stands at a fork in the road and splits - Lila takes a left and Elena takes a right and Ferrante plays with the outcome of each choice. In the end as I read i was unconsciously (or consciously) tallying up who is getting the better deal, but ultimately by the end of the second novel I had my ideas. Maybe? Things could change entirely by the third and that is what is so exciting. I am glued to finding out what happens to each of them.

Just bought the second book. :)

Ollie wrote: "Just bought the second book. :)"

Almost finished.

Good morning both! I've started the second novel and it's such a pleasure to be in the company again of these characters, hearing Lenu's voice. I think you are both write about the mirror aspect of the narrative -- the character glossary at the start reminds us that both Lenu and Lila were born on the same month and year, for example.

I was struck by the symmetry between the start of the first novel and this second one: in the first one, we get invited into the narrative by Lenu because Lila has decided to efface herself and disappear. In the second book, Lila gives her diaries to Lenu... who drops them in the river! I think as a reader we are being asked to think once again about this act of telling or retelling, what is remembered and what disappears. Very much looking forward to reading on.

Have a good week. x

Ollie wrote: "Good morning both! I've started the second novel and it's such a pleasure to be in the company again of these characters, hearing Lenu's voice. I think you are both write about the mirror aspect of..."

Ollie and Krista, I've finished book two _The Story of a Name_ and am more now than ever stuck by the mirror imaging of the two characters. Here is a passage that reminds me of just that. "It was as if she [Lila] wanted to take the power away even from the realistic possibility of violent death by reducing it to words, to a form that could be controlled." p. 343 in Chapter 87.

I want to take an early stab at your question about the shoes that Lila makes as MacGuffin. I'm drawn now to the sense that the shoes like the story the Blue Fairy represent the struggle that creativity must endure to survive. So MacGuffin perhaps in the sense that we don't really care about the shoes. We care about the struggle to make them.

I will put up book three today. And not so by the way as I like to say, the tetralogy has been signed to be a film!

Mary, if you don't mind me asking, do you see any parallels between the mirroring here and your own work, Passing Through? I was struck by some similar themes when I read the last chapter you uploaded. And that quote at the start of your book, "we always hurt the ones we love", is relevant here too, I think.

I really like your point Mary about the shoes and the Blue Fairy. Maybe Lenu's retelling of their lives is a homage to that creativity too, that life force.

Ollie wrote: "Mary, if you don't mind me asking, do you see any parallels between the mirroring here and your own work, Passing Through? I was struck by some similar themes when I read the last chapter you uploa..."

First to stay on Ferrante: She is a woman as this _Paris Review_ Interview clearly reveals: Paris Review Interview: Interview w Elena #Ferrante http://buff.ly/1mDiqFR

I found it yesterday and sent it out as a tweet.

I am right with Ferrante on the nature of the writing process. And in that sense, my unconscious mind has been on a path of discovery that seems to be writing itself—and of course, I’d not yet discovered Ferrante when I began _Passing Through_ that I am writing live on Wattpad.com, meaning I am not worrying about the editing process—and am posting as the chapters emerge, sometimes quickly, sometimes not so much. That’s the scary part of the process—doing this in this way. But because of my age, I don’t feel as if I have the time to wait as patiently for the publishing world to find me. Been through that, been found, and know that the real joy is in the creation and being read. Both of which I get on Wattpad even if I don’t get the feeling of being so-called truly credentialed. In this last sense, I am exploring through both main characters, who mirror one another, the issue of being “seen”.

Mary, it was through that interview that I discovered Ferrante! I somehow never doubted she was a woman. (Probably because most of my favourite writers are women; if there was a hint of "male" anywhere, I'd probably have picked it up!) :-)

I think your decision to post the chapters of Passing Through is a good one (for us lucky readers) because for those of us who have signed up to see where it goes, part of the pleasure will be to see how it develops, changes, gets edited and so forth. In a way, it's like being invited into your studio every day and watching you work, then seeing how the work changes the following day and so forth.

Ollie wrote: "Mary, it was through that interview that I discovered Ferrante! I somehow never doubted she was a woman. (Probably because most of my favourite writers are women; if there was a hint of "male" anyw..."

I wept a bit, Ollie, when I read this: the happy tears of being "seen." Thank you, good sir and reader.

Good morning Mary and Krista! If you'd both like to discuss book 2 now, that's fine by me! I can squint my eyes and come back later to read your comments when I've finished the book. Have a good Wednesday. x

Good morning Mary and Krista (and all others following this thread). Looks like they still haven't cracked Ferrante's real identity:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016...

And I hope they never will!

I'm reading the second book a little slower than the first because I'm reading it in French (i've started studying in preparation for moving to Montreal in 2017 with my boyfriend). So apologies for the slowness. I'm currently at the point where Lenu goes to Lina's house to study and Antonio is terrified that he will be called by the army and there won't be anyone to take care of his family. I'm enjoying it just as much as the first book.

Ollie wrote: "Good morning Mary and Krista (and all others following this thread). Looks like they still haven't cracked Ferrante's real identity:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016......"

But clearly _The Paris Review_ has met her. So whether or not we know who she is, we do know she is a woman. The question in my mind is does the answer really matter because the work stands without her public appearance or her photo. Related to the article you post is that _The Story of the Lost Child_, the last in the trilogy has been long-listed for the Mann-Booker Prize. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016...

Oh, I hope she wins the Prize!

Read this! Elissa Schappell, long-time book reviewer for _Vanity Fair_ (and soon departing to write on her own) interviews Elena Ferrante here in two parts: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/201... This is the link to the fascinating part 1. The link to part 2 is embedded in part 1. --Mary

Thanks Mary, will read ASAP.

Thank you Mary - and hello to both! :-)

I'm *still* in Book 2 (sorry I'm being so slow - I'm reading it in French, to be closer to the original Italian but also to practice a bit). I'm at the part where the holidays at the beach are coming to an end - Lila and Nino are together and Lenu is miserable.

x Ollie

Hi, Krista and Oliver, I'm going to put up book four of the tetralogy. The interview is fascinating and Ferrante (an alias we now know) discusses in particular why so many have assumed she must be a man or a group of men. She also tells us authors she reads and have been influential on her own work and discusses her writing process.

Oliver, I'm super impressed that you're reading the second novel in French! See you in Quebec?

I wish we could get more folks to join our conversation. Any ideas on how to do that?

Maybe I'll post something to followers on Wattpad.

Krista wrote: "Thanks Mary, will read ASAP."

Oliver wrote: "Thank you Mary - and hello to both! :-)

I'm *still* in Book 2 (sorry I'm being so slow - I'm reading it in French, to be closer to the original Italian but also to practice a bit). I'm at the part..."

H

Morning Mary and Krista,

Yes... definitely see you in Quebec! Or perhaps Paris...? I'd be up for meeting you both there (and others who wish to join us) - but Quebec would also do. :-)

I just reached the point at Book 2 where Nino and Lila's plan is activated and Lenu spends the evening with Nella and the Sarratore family. She goes down to the beach at night by herself and has that realisation about how Lila throws herself at life while she just watches from the sidelines.

One thing I noticed about these two novels is how Ferrante is good at making the mid-part of the novel exciting. Other writers have difficulty in transitioning from Act 1 to Act 3 but Ferrante is quite the opposite! I also like how the beach at Ischia in both books is this mid-break - a time away from their neighbourhood in Naples (almost like a fairy land they go for a while before returning to their realities.) I'm also intrigued by Sarratore Sr as a reoccuring figure (in the first book, as a family destroyer and also innocence destroyer) and now back again in this second book, still after Lenu... I suppose Ferrante is using him as some kind of mirror to Nino? Nino wants so badly to be different from his father but in so many ways they are the same.

I also think Nella's revelation to Lenu that she doesn't like Lila, that Lenu is better than her, is Ferrante trying to tell us something about Lenu's narrative (unreliable narrator?) Lila has something almost Kali-like about her (that Indian goddess). From Wikipedia: Kali "represents Time, Change, Power, Creation, Preservation, and Destruction".

Mary, Nella's talk about Lila also reminded me of Zizek in how he says the perfect and the beautiful is actually repulsive - that we need a blemish in it ("Objet petit a") to see beauty.

Ok, back to the book... enjoy your Sundays!

x Ollie

Here is another interview with Ferrante, this one in The New Yorker on May 19, 2016: http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

Ollie, I will be rereading Zizek to comment. --Mary

(Krista, I mentioned Zizek to Mary because of a chat elsewhere related to one of his books on Lacan - happy to expand if you're interested - and apologies for introducing a bit of a side note, perhaps unrelated!)

Oliver wrote: "(Krista, I mentioned Zizek to Mary because of a chat elsewhere related to one of his books on Lacan - happy to expand if you're interested - and apologies for introducing a bit of a side note, perh..."

The Slavoj Zizek I've been reading is _An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture.

Oh dear... I can't believe Lenu gave herself to Sarratore Sr!

(She did, didn't she? :) .... sleep with Sarratore Sr. I have such mixed feeling about that.)

I am dipping back into book 3, about a 1/4 of the way in and I feel the pull again. How do we describe this magic in storytelling ability? Where it feels like the book calls to you and you can't resist it? I keep wondering if it's because I am trying to find something out about myself? Or if I am vastly curious about the experience of being a woman in Italy at this time? Or is it a multitude of factors and she got the recipe perfect? It's been a long time since I've been magnetized to 'large' books. Sadly I've considered myself short on attention. But this is not the case I see.

I want to meet you guys in Paris. We could do a writer's walk. Let's keep visualizing this.

Krista wrote: "(She did, didn't she? :) .... sleep with Sarratore Sr. I have such mixed feeling about that.)

I am dipping back into book 3, about a 1/4 of the way in and I feel the pull again. How do we describe..."

I am also in book 3 and totally mesmerized, despite having put down the book after book 2. Maybe it was Lena's giving herself to Sarratore Sr., Ollie? But I don't really thinks so. Last night I met a scholar from the University of Chicago, art history, from Italy. She said that in Italy, Ferrante's work is viewed with some skepticism. She'd read only one of the earlier novels. It might be worth a search of Italian reviews of her work to add to the discussion. I'll see what I can find.

I also want to meet the both of you in Paris! I was at a poetry evening last night (Coffee Poetry at the Troubadour) and I imagined the both of you with me there. :-)

I think Ursula K Le Guin is also skeptical of her work (she gave up after the second book in this tetralogy.) I'm like you, also captivated and looking forward to reading the next two.

Good morning Mary and Krista, hope you're both well and enjoy your weekends!

I'm close to the end now of Book 2 (I know, I know... it's going slow). I've been thinking lately of writing a short fanfic on one of the supporting characters. So here's my question: if you were to write a fanfic on these novels, which character would you choose to focus on? And why? (without giving too much away from Book 3 onwards!)

Another thing: I spent the weekend with friends in Brussels recently and they are traveling soon to Naples and Sicily. So this got me thinking... imagine if next year or so we met in Naples for a week of literature, dining, walks, conversations and writing? :-)

I'm actually now tempted to book a week or two there anyway next year (spring time I think, May) and I'm going to get advice from these friends on where to rent a place, etc.

Wouldn't it be wonderful for all of us to meet in Naples itself, or nearby, and discuss the four books, visit places it mentions, write together and so forth? Daydreams. :-)

Oliver wrote: "Good morning Mary and Krista, hope you're both well and enjoy your weekends!

I'm close to the end now of Book 2 (I know, I know... it's going slow). I've been thinking lately of writing a short fa..."

Oliver, my choice for fanfic would actually be Elena Ferrante herself--the pseudonym for the author who refuses to be identified publicly and who fascinatingly appears to be the autobiographical subject of the tetralogy--I don't believe that in any interview she has denied the autobiographical nature of her fiction. That very fact is one of the reasons I believe the books are so marvelous. She may be writing a fiction but as I've explained in some detail, emotional truth is often found tellingly in close-to-the-bone fiction. See my essay: http://www.factsandarts.com/literary-...

Now see this May 19, 2016 interview with Ferrante in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

I'm now deep into book 4 _The Story of the Lost Child_ and will write a fuller review of the tetralogy here when done. But briefly I want to say that Ferrante has broken through in a way that no novelist I can name in modern times has done. The intellect that underlies the telling, the imagination that drives the form and heart and soul that write here are mesmerizing: Brilliant by definition.

Look forward to reading your thoughts on it Mary, and yours Krista. I'm about to embark on book 3, but back in English, so should hopefully catch up with the both of you very soon. Please feel free to post your thoughts here on the books and not worry about spoilers, etc., I'll come back to the comments once I've finished them.

Have a lovely week. x

Oliver wrote: "Look forward to reading your thoughts on it Mary, and yours Krista. I'm about to embark on book 3, but back in English, so should hopefully catch up with the both of you very soon. Please feel free..."

Just want to note that I've now finished all four novels--and will say only at this point that the tetralogy is one novel. You gotta get to the end. I am thinking about the review of the four that I'll post here and on _The Story of the Lost Child_, the last of the four, but I want to wait a bit before posting.

One, I hope others catch up with me. Two, I hope some in the book club join us. Ollie, I can't find the comment on your feed on Wattpad.com wherein you invited a new follower to join us, but I got a notification and wanted to second that--so do tell him: no obligation to my novel to join the book club--the club has always been all about others--just see the radio interviews. Third, as you know, I am working hard on _Passing Through_ -- but had to go away to Iowa for five days.

So more soon from me. Read on, please. It's so worth it, even if you must skim some to get through the third and last volumes of Ferrante's masterpiece--and that it is.

Hi everyone! Happy Sunday. It has been a beautiful weekend here in London and I've finally started reading "Those who Leave...". Currently lying on my sofa, sipping orange juice with tonic water to the sound of Italian music from the 60s, marvelling at Ferrante's genius for gripping the reader in the 1st pages. It's always something dramatic (a disappearance, journals thrown over a bridge or, in this case, a body lying outside a church.)

I'll speed through this book, I know; and I'll be very sad when I finally reach the end of the tetralogy.

X Ollie

Oliver wrote: "Hi everyone! Happy Sunday. It has been a beautiful weekend here in London and I've finally started reading "Those who Leave...". Currently lying on my sofa, sipping orange juice with tonic water to..."

So glad our conversation continues about this masterpiece of a tetralogy. Can't wait to hear what you have to say about _Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay_.

Look forward to discussing it with you all Mary!

And here's my review (finally!) of the second book:

he second novel in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan tetralogy, The Story of a New Name (or "The New Name", as it's called in the French edition I read), picks up where the first book ends. While the first book dealt with Lila and Lenu's childhood and blossoming womanhood, and how their life paths diverged, the second book looks at the ramifications of their choices, and their consequences.

The novel takes place mostly in Naples during the 60s, where the two women are now in their early 20s. Lenu and Lila, friends since childhood and protagonists of the tetralogy, are distorted versions of each other. They each see in the other "what could have been", but there is an important distinction between them: Lila wishes to erase her past, and has done so ever since she was little, while Lenu holds on to the past and wants to own it, no matter how painful or embarrassing it may be, because she finds a sense of herself in that - a self that is different from Lila’s. The novel beautifully showed this towards its end, when Lenu receives money from the publication of her novel and has the option to arrive in her old, poor neighbourhood chauffeured by a taxi driver, but chooses instead to take a bus; while Lila, on the other hand, given a copy of her story "The Blue Fairy", which she wrote as a child (and which is the seed of Lenu's acclaimed first novel), throws it into the fire without a second thought.

One of the main themes of the first novel was the fairy tale (Cinderella, “The Blue Fairy”), with the culmination of the shoemaker's daughter, Lila, marrying the neighbourhood's rich and eligible bachelor, Stefano. The second novel plays with the idea of mirrors and doubles, being in itself a sort of mirror of the first novel. There’s domestic violence at its start, a visit in the summer to the island of Ischia at its centre, and a celebratory victory at the end – this time not a wedding like in the first novel, but Lenu's crowning as a new published author.

This notion of the mirror is most noticeable in the mid sections of the first two novels, which take place in the island of Ischia (in both cases during summer breaks.) In the first novel, Lenu spends the summer with the Sarratore family as a teenager, falls in love with their eldest child Nino and is sexually molested by the father, Donato Sarratore. In the second novel, she returns to the island with Lila (who needs the fresh air in order to conceive a baby by Stefano), this time orchestrating an encounter with the Sarratore family so she can see her beloved Nino. But Nino and Lila fall in love, and in one of their nights together Lenu gives herself to Donato on the beach (this degrading event goes on to be a central scene in Lenu's first published novel, accentuating Ferrante's playful "story within a story" that runs throughout the first two novels.)

Other doubles and mirrors proliferate: the two shoe shops (Cerullo and Solara), the two lovers of the married couple (Nino and Ada), the two babies (Pinuccia's and Lila's), and more.

The "new name" in the novel's title is Lila's new married name, and all the things that go wrong with it, but it's also Lenu's new name, Elena Greco - the name of someone who worked hard to get an education and is crowned with a published novel and a nice advance. The "new name" is about the painful, awkward transition from girls to women, from the limited choices offered to Lenu and Lila and the best they can do with them.

One element of these novels that I’ve found enjoyable is the ongoing question of what's fiction and what's non-fiction. There's the aspect of a novel being within a novel, of Elena Greco perhaps being an alias for Elena Ferrante. Ferrante has said in interviews that the author is no longer connected to the book once it’s published. I wonder what this commentary says about the tetralogy, and even about Lenu’s novel in “The Story of a Name”.