56 hours later…
I’ve been enchanted by My Brilliant Friend, the first novel in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet, for nearly 10 years. I first read it in 2015, then I watched the show in 2021, and I read the book again this winter. That first book charts narrator Elena Greco’s childhood friendship with the precocious and mischievous Lila Cerullo, in a poor neighborhood of Naples in the 1950s.
The second book, The Story of a New Name, takes through Lila and Elena’s adolescence, and is arguably my favorite book of all time. The plot is almost feverishly pacy; it mimics the speed at which life moves when you’re a teenager, and things like staying out late and falling in love are novelties, not tired clichés.
When I first started book three, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, I feared it would be boring. The clandestine love affairs, shocking betrayals and rapid reconciliations that made The Story of a New Name so engaging are hardly a major feature of adulthood. It was in this book that both girls found their feet in their careers - Lila as an early tech entrepreneur, Elena as a respected journalist - had children, and settled into stable, long-term relationships. Diverging political views seemed to be the book’s hottest-button issue. Until the final third.
By the end of book three, cracks begin to emerge within the stable foundation of Elena’s life. Lila, whose volatility caused most of Elena’s problems in the earlier books, has leveled off. She hasn’t moved on from the neighborhood, but she’s certainly it’s most successful - and generous - resident. Elena has relocated to Florence, where she lives with her husband, a university professor from a wealthy and notable Italian family, and her two daughters, Elsa and Dede. Having published two books and multiple newspaper articles, Elena is in high demand in literary circles. She wants for nothing, but the striving muscle she’s spent her entire life building - the one that she used to propel herself out of the neighborhood and into (and beyond) the echelons about which she could previously only dream - refuses to rest. Her experience begs the eternal question: when you reach the pinnacle of your professional goals; when you build the family society expects of you…what happens then? For most ambitious perfectionist, the goalpost simply keeps moving. For Elena, that goalpost is romantic, and when her childhood crush, the notoriously unreliable womanizer Nino Sarratore, expresses interest in her, she sees only one solution: to blow up her entire life in pursuit of this next goal.
The fourth and final book in the series, The Story of the Lost Child, charts the inevitable fallout of Elena’s decision. At times, it’s painful to read; her willful ignorance in the face of Nino’s irresponsibility feels universally familiar, whether you’ve been there yourself or watched a friend in that position. The final book confronts the reader both with the harsh reality of adhering to societal expectations (Elena) and the simple and random cruelties of life (Lila).
In this final volume, Elena is the classic perfectionist, who, having spent decades cultivating her perfect image, reaches a breaking point and can no longer maintain it. We’ve all seen this happen in real-life; the seemingly ‘perfect’ person you followed announces the closing of their business, the end of their marriage, or even a “quiet quit,” where they simply stop producing content of the quality and at the cadence they were once known and respected for. Elena has spent so much time cultivating her image from an outside perspective and viewing her success through the lens of the other (she is constantly imagining Lila’s reactions to her accomplishments), that she has no idea who she is. Does she still harbor an enduring childhood crush on Nino? Is she doing this to prove to Lila (who dated Nino as a teen) that she’s lovable, too? Or is it what she perceives as the easiest way out of a loveless marriage she only entered into because she thought it was the right thing to do? She spends the entire book figuring this out, sometimes at the expense of her daughters, friendship, and career.
Lila, on the other hand, has changed. She’s in a solid relationship, owns a successful company, and gives birth to a daughter, Tina, as brilliant and beautiful as she is. Though Elena is still quick to judge and criticize, Lila maintains her friendships, is generous with her wealth, stimulates the neighborhood’s economy by employing residents at her company, and doesn’t ask for much in return. She finally seems content with her life (though Elena, always self-consciously aware of the scope of Lila’s brilliance, insists she must want more). Until Tina goes missing. Lila’s daughter, who she has put all of her effort into raising and adoring, vanishes without a trace, while all three of Elena’s (she has a third daughter, Imma with Nino), whom she frequently abandons for weeks at a time to see Nino (including during Christmas) and go on work trips, are present and in good health. Ferrante is at her most powerful - and devastating - when she’s reminding us all of the randomness and injustice of everyday life. Pain comes for everyone; and it’s one of the reasons her books are so easy to connect with and so hard to read in equal measure. The Story of a Lost Child is the bleakest of all four books, but when you’re dealing with an author best known for creating works that feel remarkably true to life - you can’t expect a perfect, happy ending.
Though I’m sad to reach the end of the series, the (by my calculations) 56 hours I spent reading 1,693 pages about these two girls could not have been better spent. Ferrante forever <3