Book 2 of Elena Ferrante's Neopolitan Series sizzles

The Story of a New Name -- Book Review by Vinay Prasad

Only spoilers ahead

Book 2 of Ferrante pushes the characters of Elena and Lila to extremes. Elena achieves acclaim as debut novelist, and Lila is left destitute, with a bastard child working in a meat packing plant. Ferrante is merciless in her depiction of Italian life in the late 60s, and the way women’s fates are dictated by men.

In a prior post, I reviewed book 1 of the series. You can read that here.

Book 1 ends with the unique friendship of Elena and Lila at opposite polls. Elena loses her virginity to an old man, the father of her love interest— a man whose affection disgusts her, and Lila finds herself married to Stefano, the man of her choosing. Yet, all is not perfect, as Stefano has traded away the shoes Lila made to his rival.

Book 2 ends with Elena on top. She has completed her education, is quietly engaged, and her fiance’s connections have led her to publish her first novel, a financial boon to her family. Lila meanwhile has left her marriage, given birth to an abandoned son (by father Nino), and works stuffing sausage casing, cuts along her hands, living in poverty. Lila has now become the copper pot she envisioned long ago.

When Elena presents her with the book she wrote as a child— a window into a rich and wondrous mind full of possibility— Lila tosses it into the factory fire. She never had an education to further that passion. That girl didn’t die, she never was.

“I stayed behind waiting. She, on the other hand, seized things, truly wanted them, was passionate for them, played for all or nothing, and wasn’t afraid of contempt, mockery, spitting, beatings.”

Midway through the novel, Ferrante confronts the fundamental distinction between the two girls. Lila, at the moment, is getting what she wants— in the throes of an affair with Nino. “She deserved Nino, in other words, because she thought to that love him meant to try to have him, not to hope that he would want her.” While, Elena finds herself alone, and unwanted. Yet, by the end of the book, fate would reverse, and all of it is due to this central difference.

But, aren’t we all both of these things? Both Lila and Elena. At times, we do what is expected of us— we study, we work hard, we wait, and yet, for all of us, aren’t there moments, when we seize things— play for all or nothing.

I suspect, like many of Ferrante’s readers, I sympathize with both characters. By my early 30s, I was a doctor, I had written a book, and was a professor, running a research lab. In many ways, I was on a quiet and staid path. But I am also petulant and impulsive. The work I have done on cancer drug policy, clinical trials, evidence based medicine and later public health policy occurred despite contempt, mockery, spitting and beatings. What’s the point of being a professor—- of tenure— if you aren’t willing to push hard on the issues that matter. Am I Elena, of course, but I am Lila too. Or as Ferrante once told a reporter, “I prefer to think of myself as being inside a tangled knot; tangled knots fascinate me.”

“Some like the Solaras, like Pasquale, Antonio, Donato Sarratore, and even Franco Mari, my boyfriend at Normale, wanted us in ways that were different— aggressive, subordinate, heedless, attentive— but that they wanted us there was no doubt. Others like Alfonso, Enzo, Nino, had— according to equally diverse attitudes— an aloof self possession, as if between us and them there were a wall and the work of scaling it were our job.”

How do men want women? Perhaps there is no better answer in literature than Ferrante’s. We want them to be aggressive, subordinate, heedless and attentive. At times, the desire is direct, but we can also be aloof, particularly in youth. And what about women? Are their lives defined merely with respect to the men in their lives? Lila is a wondrous character— rebellious, stubborn, brilliant, and yet her entire life’s story was set by men— her husband, her adulterer. Her affair with Nino is ruinous for her— changes her entire life— and yet he continues, as if nothing has occurred. He even has the temerity to attend Elena’s novel launch and speak highly of the book. Affairs can be like that, ruinous to one party, but the other continues as if nothing happened. Lila— a force of nature— is a prisoner of her times, and for even such a powerful women, men control her fate.

For Elena, the story is more complicated. She uses education to elevate herself from her neighbors— her culture, and yet she too is defined by men. Were it not for her fiance’s mother, her book would not appear.

Is Ferrante deliberate in this framing— does she want the reader to feel her anger at the way the two central women are pushed — literally and figuratively— by the men around them? When accused of being a male writer by Vanity Fair, Ferrante says:

• Thus, when a woman’s writing does not respect those areas of competence, those thematic sectors and the tones that the experts have assigned to the categories of books to which women have been confined, the commentators come up with the idea of male bloodlines. And, if there’s no author photo of a woman then the game is up: it’s clear, in that case, that we are dealing with a man or an entire team of virile male enthusiasts of the art of writing. What if, instead, we’re dealing with a new tradition of women writers who are becoming more competent, more effective, are growing tired of the literary gynaeceum and are on furlough from gender stereotypes. We know how to think, we know how to tell stories, we know how to write them as well as, if not better, than men.

Book 2 ends with another cliffhanger. I suspect that I will be reading book 3 sometime in the future. It is clear Ferrante is a masterful writer, and her series is carefully constructed. Is it the best book of the 21st century? I am still not sure, but I will be reading to find out. Like all great novelists, she has revealed something about all of us in these two girls from Naples.