The Story of the Lost Child (5*)

What a propulsive read!  Elena Ferrante might just as easily have called her final volume The Godmother.  It rushed like a freight train toward its uncertain conclusion proving yet again the journey often can be more satisfying than the destination.  Lena's and Lila's complexly rendered friendship enters the ranks of my top ten literary experiences with Ferrante's edge-of-your-seat twists, set like intricate traps, her magnificent depiction of the ages of woman and her broader understanding of human nature--including how we become our parents and the mysterious bond between women and gay men, seen from the female perspective for a welcome change.

I sat listening and slowly rediscovered--but as if I were dragging it up from a deep well--the old solidarity of the time when we sat at the same desk.  Yet only then did I understand that even if I had never been aware that he was different, I was fond of him precisely because he wasn't like the other boys, precisely because of that peculiar alienation from the male behaviors of the neighborhood.  And now, as he spoke, I discovered that the bond endured.

Brava!

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (5*)

 

My increasing passion for Elena Ferrante's quartet makes me wonder once again if I have a "feminine sensibility."  This series speaks to me as few books have done, maybe since I read The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, up to now my favorite novel.  Somehow, she has managed to write a feminist potboiler that thoroughly depicts women's feelings and frustrations at different stages in their lives.  Her saga also persuasively details how thoroughly the past anchors our present.  

Imagine the thrill of finally being "seen" by a man, especially one you have loved since childhood, who has articulately defended your first novel AND who stands up to your clueless intellectual husband.

Then turning to Pietro he [Nino] said: “You should leave your wife more time.“

“She has all day available.“

“I’m not kidding. If you don’t you’re guilty not only on a human level but also on a political one.”

“What’s the crime?“

“The waste of intelligence. A community that finds it natural to suffocate with the care of home and children so many women’s intellectual energies is its own enemy and doesn’t realize it.”

I waited in silence for Pietro to respond. My husband reacted with sarcasm.

“Elena can cultivate her intelligence when and how she likes, the essential thing is that she not take time from me.”

“If she doesn’t take it from you, then who can she take it from?“

********

Tell me you haven't felt like this before a date with someone you really like.

So Nino had come with his wife; I was terrified by the comparison. I knew what I was like, I knew the crude physicality of my body, but for a good part of my life I had given it little importance. I had grown up with one pair of shoes at a time, ugly dresses sewed by my mother, makeup only on rare occasions.  In recent years I had begun to be interested in fashion, to educate my taste under Adele’s guidance, and now I enjoyed dressing up. But sometimes—especially when I had dressed not only to make a good impression in general but for a man—preparing myself (this was the word) seemed to me to have something ridiculous about it. All that struggle, all that time spent camouflaging myself when I could be doing something else. The colors that suited me, the ones that didn’t, the styles that made me look thinner, those that made me fatter, the cut that flattered me, the one that didn’t.   A lengthy, costly preparation. Reducing myself to a table set for the sexual appetite of the male, to a well-cooked dish to make his mouth water. And then the anguish of not succeeding, of not seeming pretty, of not managing to conceal with skill the vulgarity of the flesh with its moods and odors and imperfections.

********

Ferrante also nails exactly why women should have absolute control over their own bodies:

Men, dazed by pleasure, absent-mindedly sow their seed. Overcome by their orgasm, they fertilize us. They show up inside us and withdraw, leaving, concealed in our flesh, their ghost, like a lost object. 

The Story of a New Name (5*)

The second part of Ferrante's engrossing Neapolitan quartet is very, very intense.  Ferrante presents marital rape explicitly enough for even a Neanderthal to vote for conviction in a jury trial.  And while it would take somebody with far greater psychological insight than me to explain why a remarkably intelligent adolescent girl would choose to lose her virginity with an older man who once molested her, her deeply disturbing act rings true nevertheless.  I love spending time with Lila and Lenu in an interior world where men play second banana for a change.

My Brilliant Friend (5*)

What do I have in common with two girls in Naples?  Plenty, it turns out.  Elena Ferrante passes the Bechdel test as easily as Lina and Elena master Latin, immersing the reader in a foreign but strangely familiar world during a period of their lives when everything seems like a matter of life and death.  Her finely observed, organic descriptions of the girls' political and sexual awakening make readers feel as if they were developing their own lifelong friendship with these intelligent, beautiful characters.  No doubt their continuing saga will engage me for the three remaining novels.