Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

I just can't with these books. They are so good. The characters are so real. It's like reading a soap opera but in the best way possible. I mean, I want to yell at these characters:

WHY ELENA?! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?

This is a well-crafted novel whose attraction lies in the deft characterization of the two women at its center: Lila and Elena. Through Elena's narration, the reader can feel the forces at work in their lives. Family, friends, feminism and politics press in on them, insisting that they take up a position, hold an opinion, do something when what Lila and Elena are truly seeking is simply a way through life that will allow them to be safe, productive and happy. In their effort to find their path, they fight, make mistakes, and mistrust one another and those around them. This, to me, was the most intriguing question asked in the book: how do you know if what you feel, what you think is the right thing to feel and think? The book ends with show more Elena taking a decisive step that will redefine her life, but is it the right step?

A word about the series: I read this, the third book, first. Once you get grounded in the names (and there's a glossary to help), you don't need to have read the first two books to follow the story. Now, though, I am going to read the first book, despite wanting terribly to read the fourth to find out what happened! show less

Lila und Elena sind erwachsen geworden und trotz ihrer ähnlichen Herkunft und ihrer engen Freundschaft könnten ihre Lebenswege kaum unterschiedlicher verlaufen. Lila, getrennt von ihrem Mann Stefano, führt ein ärmliches Dasein mit ihrem Sohn und verdient sich ihren Lebensunterhalt mühsam in einer Fleischfabrik. Elena hingegen setzt ihre Schriftstellerkarriere fort: Ihr erstes Buch wird ein Erfolg, sie beginnt Artikel für Zeitungen zu schreiben und festigt so ihren Ruf als Autorin und Intellektuelle. Doch als sie Pietro heiratet, den Sohn einer bedeutenden Familie, lässt sie sich nach und nach in die Rolle der Hausfrau und nach der Geburt ihrer Kinder in die der Mutter drängen, während sich um sie herum die Gesellschaft in einem show more Umwälzungsprozess befindet, in den auch ihre früheren Freunde verwickelt sind.
So krass wie in diesem Buch sind mir die Unterschiede zwischen Lila und Elena, der Ich-Erzählerin, bisher nicht bewusst geworden. Doch hier ist es überdeutlich, finde ich: Während Lila stets nach ihren Überzeugungen handelt und dafür jede Menge Nachteile in Kauf nehmen muss, ist bei Elena der vorherrschende Gedanke ihres Handelns: Was denken die Anderen von mir? In all ihrem Tun findet sich bis knapp vor dem Ende des Buches nie der Satz: Ich will ... Ihr Erfolg ist auch die Belohnung dafür, stets den Erwartungen derer zu entsprechen, zu denen sie gehören will. Doch als ihre unterdrückten Wünsche und Bedürfnisse zu stark werden, endet Alles in einem Eklat.
Lila hingegen hat noch nie den Erwartungen entsprochen, was sie eine Menge Kraft gekostet hat. Als sie endlich Erfolg hat und richtig viel Geld verdient, sieht man im Rione über ihre Extravaganzen hinweg und heisst sie wieder willkommen - doch bis dahin war es ein harter Weg.
Neben den Schilderungen dieser Zeitabschnitte im Leben der beiden Frauen spielt auch die damalige gesellschaftliche Situation in Italien eine wichtige Rolle in der Geschichte. Auch dort gab es die 68er, studentische Unruhen, man kämpfte für die unterdrückten Arbeiter, ohne jedoch eine Ahnung davon zu haben, wie es diesen tatsächlich erging oder was diese wollten. Ferrante beschreibt beispielhaft an der Situation der beiden Frauen, wie Elenas 'Seite' nur das Beste für die Armen wollte, wohingegen Lila und ihre KollegInnen den Unmut ihrer Arbeitgeber ausbaden mussten.
Wer will, kann dieses Buch (wie auch die beiden vorherigen Bände) als fesselnde Erzählung einer Frauenfreundschaft lesen. Es ist aber auch ein Gesellschaftspanorama, das einem die Welt eines Italiens nahe bringt, das so noch nicht bekannt war (mir zumindest nicht ;-)). Ich freue mich schon sehr auf den vierten Band! show less

This had to be the most infuriating plot in the series, especially Elena’ affair with Nino. I did not think this character could get worse, but he does and it got on my nerves! It was also maddening to read Elena’s narration as she reveals her jealousy, her insecurity at almost all times, her deep need for validation from almost anyone, and how she admires almost every woman she meets who is confident - Sylvia, mariarosa, Adele, Nadia etc, except her mother (I’m not going to get into this but I felt deeply for the mother).
But look, kudos to the writer for creating such a stirring prose and plot that felt so realistic, it had me gasping and also annoyed!

It's now Lenu's time to successfully climb out of the dreaded neighborhood. Having published her first novel, about to be married to the son of a famous university professor, and starting anew in Florence, what else could our heroine possibly wish for? Apparently, nothing that can't be fixed by putting some distance between her and the neighborhood.

... but Lenu finds that the world keeps moving at breakneck speed. She needs to build a career, have an opinion about the student protests, and also find the time to engage in lively discussions about politics. Yet she barely has enough time to take care of her newborn baby.

Lila in the meantime, reluctantly finds herself smack dab in the middle of a worker's uprising and in an ever increasing show more feud between communists and fascists. A rather unenviable position to be in, most especially with a toddler in tow, and yet our heroine somehow finds herself flourishing against all odds...

Once again, I was whisked away into 1970s Italy, and dropped in the midst of some tumultuous times. Just like Lenu, all I could do was try and hold on to the ever changing story, especially when it came to following Lila's account. The more people tried to grind her into the dust, the more stronger she'd emerge from it all.

Ironically enough, while in theory so much better off, Lenu's supposedly fairytale life was falling apart around her. Or maybe it was just the girl that was falling apart? Suffice to say that I couldn't wait to finish the story... and yet at the same time I was constantly dreading what the next page would bring.

Once again, Lenu's feelings have managed to capture my imagination, and make me tremble in fear at the world's perceived dismissal. Although the individual details of her life don't apply to me, the struggle to stay afloat in a world that won't wait for you to find your footing, was incredibly relatable.

Score: 4.6/5 stars

This was my least favorite book of the series, what with it having caused a lengthy depressive state after I finished it. But just like with its two prequels, I'm still pondering the book over a month after finishing it.

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Review of part 1: My Brilliant Friend
Review of part 2: The Story of a New Name
Review of part 4: The Story of the Lost Child show less

This is the third of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, and in the course of the friendship between Raffaella / Lila and Elena / Lena which these novels map it marks the point where they are the furthest apart, so much in fact that rather than braided it appears as a case of parallel lives.

The novel’s title, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, quite clearly marks the reason for this distance: while Lena continues to move away from Naples, both geographically and socially, Lila stays – she briefly moves to another part of the city, but finally returns to their old neighbourhood – even after the parting from er husband. There is barely any contact between the two friends at all during the first half of the novel, and the book’s show more structure reflects this: It starts out with several chapters dedicated to the developments in Lena’s life, then switching to Lila as Lena (and with her the reader) catch with what has been happening to her in the meantime. But eve as the friends are physically and spiritually apart, they continue to be connected by a bond – each still is the other’s dark guiding star, each is for the other – in increasingly obscure and difficult to understand ways – their ideal existence, having what she secretly desires but cannot have because she took the wrong path at some stage in her life. It probably is this which allows the two to reconnect again after their long parting and initiate a slow process of approaching each other again.

Both friends are grown women by now, and this volume takes place mostly during the seventies, and even more than even in the second novel events in the wider world play heavily into individual lives here. It is a time where the ideals of late sixties begin to wear thin, where it becomes increasingly clear and finally undeniable that the better world so many had hoped for ist not going to manifest any time soon, which basically leads to two opposing reactions among those who hoped for that better world – either they resign and turn inward, retreat into their private lives, or they turn outward and become even more radical, finally even openly violent towards the existing system. This split runs not only through the friendship between Lila and Lena but through all of their friends, too, and leads to some very painful ruptures and, in some cases, tragedy.

And in a way, the split runs through this latter half of the Neapolitan Novels, too: In Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, the metafictional thread has become so thin as to be almost invisible, while on the other hand it the most openly political of the novels (and things will be the precise reverse in the final novel, The Story of the Lost Child). And if the second volume already dared to be very unfashionable with its unabashed advocacy of feminism, then this third one tops that by speaking very clearly and very loudly in favour of something even more unfashionable and (supposedly) discredited, namely socialism and the labour movement. With both Lena and Lila coming from poor families, and both rising (at least temporarily) into the high and petit bourgeoisie respectively, the Neapolitan Novels always have been very class-conscious; but this reaches its culmination here with Lena’s circle of friends becoming increasingly involved in increasingly radical politics while Lila experiences working life first hand as labourer in a factory.

Ferrante (and I do think it’s her rather than just the narrator) makes her sympathies for the oppressed lower classes very clear in this novel, but she does not flinch away from the more questionable aspects of radical left politics – the fruitless debates, the way the class struggle breeds violence on both sides, and finally, terrorism. As all the hopes and dreams of the late sixties are either smashed or perverted one after the other, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay turns into the by far saddest instalment of the series, becoming at times outright bleak and is kept from being depressive only by the continuing use of the melodrama structure of the narrative – the reader remains aware that, no matter how bad things are, there always is hope in soap opera, as each episodes ends with a “To Be Continued.”

And again, I find myself marvelling how this series of novels could become bestsellers – while part of their success is certainly due to Elena Ferrante’s deft use of melodrama to keep readers turning the pages, her subject matter and her emphatically non-sugarcoating way of treating it make them a rather unlikely candidate. Also, The Neapolitan Novels, while not exactly breaking new literary ground, show an awareness of form and a degree of reflection of themselves as writing that alone would raise them head and shoulders above the usual reading fodder filling the bestseller lists. These novels, while always humane and touching, emphatically are no comfort read, as becomes especially clear in this volume, and while reading it, I needed to pinch myself from time to time to make sure that yes, they really were widely read and even loved. show less

This is the third installment of Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet. Puzzlingly, the author did not take the path I was (apparently) really hoping she would at the end of the second book. Well ok, where does she go instead? The focus is almost exclusively on Lenu - her early success as a writer, her marriage to young scholar and professor, Pietro Airota, motherhood (x2), and eventual intense dissatisfaction with her choices. Around her is the backdrop of late 60's, early 70's feminism and violent political turmoil taking place in Italy. But through it all she keeps tabs on Lila, who against all odds, not just survives but, applying her considerable intelligence and work ethic, flexible moral code (and ever-present nastiness) manages to raise show more herself up and rescue her family, fallen on very hard times in the old neighborhood. Lenu also remains haunted by her lifelong obsession with Nino, who proves to be just as sh*tty in his own way as Stefano and the Solaras. The foreshadowing of what is to come in Volume 4 makes me uneasy. show less