AUTHOR: Elena Ferrante
STARTED: November 6, 2017
FINISHED: November 24, 2017
PAGES: 418
GENRE: Fiction
FIRST SENTENCE: I saw Lila for the last time five years ago, in the winter of 2005.
SUMMARY: [From BN] In the third book in the Neapolitan quartet, Elena and Lila, the two girls whom readers first met in My Brilliant Friend, have become women. Lila married at sixteen and has a young son; she has left her husband and the comforts her marriage brought and now works as a common laborer. Elena has left the neighborhood, earned her college degree, and published a successful novel, all of which has opened the doors to a world of learned interlocutors and richly furnished salons. Both women are pushing against the walls of a prison that would have seen them living a life of misery, ignorance and submission. They are afloat on the great sea of opportunities that opened up during the nineteen-seventies. Yet they are still very much bound to each other by a strong, unbreakable bond. Ferrante is one of the world’s great storytellers. With the Neapolitan quartet she has given her readers an abundant, generous, and masterfully plotted page-turner that is also a stylish work of literary fiction destined to delight readers for many generations to come.
THOUGHTS: I think that I want to dislike these books, but they keep pulling me back in. I find the lead characters and their relationship aggravating on so many levels, but I just can't stop waiting to see what happens to them. I read this book in a rush because I wanted to leave it with my mother-in-law before we returned home from Thanksgiving. That final binge read to finish the last 100 pages kept me in the story.
I think what I find most frustrating about these books is that I find myself trying to figure out why they're such hyped best-sellers. Sure, it's a good story, but I don't find it leaps and bounds better than other books that are available. The writing is also just fine. There's enough information to paint the story without hitting the purple prose level. The characters feel like real people, but that appears in other books (in better ways sometimes). So, I'm baffled why these are so popular, but then I find myself eagerly awaiting the next part of the story. Maybe that's why they're good - they're something addictive about how everything ties together just so to keep you wanting more.
Also, I want to yell at Elena all the time. Her decisions are so self-destructive and co-dependent on someone she should have cut out of her life. Many times I simply want to smack her and remind her to act like an adult instead of a teenager.
RATING: 6/10 [Good]
Comments