Elena Ferrante

"Imagine if Jane Austen got angry & you'll have some idea of how explosive these works are" (John Freeman). Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante has gained admirers among authors—Jhumpa Lahiri, Elizabeth Strout, Claire Messud, to name a few—and criti— James Wood, John Freeman, Eugenia Williamson, for example. But her most resounding success has been with readers, who have discovered in Ferrante a writer who speaks with great power and beauty of the mysteries of belonging, love, family, and friendship. In this third Neapolitan novel, Elena and Lila have become women. Both have attempted 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.

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

aywen

I discovered that I was suddenly invulnerable and invincible, as in a past stage of my life, when it had seemed to me that I could do anything. I had been born lucky. Even when fate seemed adverse, it was working for me. Of course, I had some good qualities. I was orderly, I had a good memory, I worked stubbornly, I had learned to use the tools perfected by men, I knew how to give logical consistency to any jumble of fragments, I knew how to please. But luck counted more than anything, and I was proud of feeling it next to me like a trusted friend. To have it again on my side reassured me.

Then he added, relieved: but I would have telephoned forever, in your absence I would have loved the sound of the telephone, that sound in the void, it seemed the only thing that remained to me.

We were therefore at this point: my husband’s sister considered my marriage a mistake and said it to me frankly. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, it seemed to me the ultimate and unbiased confirmation of my conjugal unease. Besides, what could I do about it? I said to myself that maturity consisted in accepting the turn that existence had taken without getting too upset, following a path between daily practices and theoretical achievements, learning to see oneself, know oneself, in expectation of great changes. Day by day I grew calmer.

Become. It was a verb that had always obsessed me, but I realized it for the first time only in that situation. I wanted to become, even though I had never known what. And I had become, that was certain, but without an object, without a real passion, without a determined ambition. I had wanted to become something—here was the point—only because I was afraid that Lila would become someone and I would stay behind. My becoming was a becoming in her wake. I had to start again to become, but for myself, as an adult, outside of her.

I feel like the knight in an ancient romance as, wrapped in his shining armor, after performing a thousand astonishing feats throughout the world, he meets a ragged, starving herdsman, who, never leaving his pasture, subdues and controls horrible beasts with his bare hands, and with prodigious courage.

She thought that she ought to explain to him carefully why she had said the things she had said at the meeting, and why she found it intolerable that those things had ended up in the pamphlet, and why she judged it pointless and stupid that the four of them, instead of still being in bed or about to enter a classroom, were standing there in the cold handing out a densely written leaflet to people who had difficulty reading, and who, besides, had no reason to subject themselves to the effort of reading, since they already knew those things, they lived them every day, and could tell even worse: unrepeatable sounds that no one would ever say, write, or read, and that nevertheless held as potential the real causes of their inferiority.

And often I succeeded: it seemed to me that I had mastered words to the point of sweeping away forever the contradictions of being in the world, the surge of emotions, and breathless speech. In short, I now knew a method of speaking and writing that—by means of a refined vocabulary, stately and thoughtful pacing, a determined arrangement of arguments, and a formal orderliness that wasn’t supposed to fail—sought to annihilate the interlocutor to the point where he lost the will to object. 

rachel

Marriage by now seemed to me an institution that, contrary to what one might think, stripped coitus of all humanity.

And I was unhappy. I lay in bed, discontent with my situation as a mnother, a married woman, the whole future debased by the repetition of domestic rituals in the kitchen, in the marriage bed.

 I'm grateful to him, I said, I learned so much from him, and I'm sorry that he now treats me and the children coldly. I thought about it for a moment, and continued: Maybe there's something mistaken in this desire men have to instruct us; I was young at the time, and I didn't realize that in his wish to transform me was the proof that he didn't like me as I was, he wanted me to be different, or, rather, he didn't want just a woman, he wanted the woman he imagined he himself would be if he were a woman. For Franco, I said, I was an opportunity for him to expand into the feminine, to take possession of it: I constituted the proof of his omnipotence, the demonstration that he knew how to be not only a man in the right way but also a woman. And today when he no longer senses me as part of himself, he feels betrayed. I expressed myself exactly like that.

Then, turning to Pietro, he said: "You should leave your wife more time." "She has all day available." "Im 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?" Pietro frowned. "When the task we give ourselves has the urgency of passion, there's nothing that can keep us from completing it." I felt wounded, I whispered with a false smile: "My husband is saying that I have no true interest." Silence. Nino asked: "And is that true?" I answered in a rush that I didn't know, I didn't know anything. But while i was speaking with embarrassment, with rage, I realized that my eyes were filled with tears. 

Those who Leave and Those who Stay

Their love is the realest I've seen but also the most painful.

deniz

As I went out of the room Lila started in her half-sleep, she whispered: "Watch me until I fall asleep. Watch me always, even when you leave Naples. That way I'll know that you see me and I'm at peace."

My heart shattered into pieces... I wish Lenù realised then how Lila saw her, how she was her light. 

"You professors insist so much education because that's how you earn a living, but studying is of no use, it doesn't even improve you- in fact it makes you even more wicked."

"Why not?" Lila stuck the wool cap on her son's head.

"We made a pact when we were children: I'm the wicked one."

Elena is just like me. As a child, us children praised for our intellect grow up as prisoners of words. We cling onto words as a salvation, praise becomes are fuel and words become our only method of expression. Yet as we keep on succeeding the praise turns dry, and so does the meaning, the motivation.

How can I explain to this woman-I thought-that from the age of six I've been a slave to letters and numbers, that my mood depends on the success of their combinations, that the joy of having done well is rare, unstable, that it lasts an hour, an afternoon, a night? 

On dreams and purposes, on writing and the reason behind someone's words; are they motivated by a spark of thought or are they motivated by the urge to move people? Which purpose of writing is more fulfilling than the others? 

But was that what I wanted? To write, to write with purpose, to write better than I had already? And to study the stories of the past and the present to understand how they worked, and to learn, learn everything about the world with the sole purpose of constructing living hearts, which no one would ever do better than me, not even Lila if she had had the opportunity?

I had long ago convinced myself that one can train oneself to anything, even to political passion.

When you exist in a place that does not welcome you, your entire life focus becomes on trying to escape that place. You envision that the freedom and happiness you seek will be waiting for you outside. But the city that birthed you belongs to the world that birthed you, and we are all made of the same clay. Growing up is realising that the sickness of your hometown is actually the sickness of the world.

I had fled, in fact. Only to discover, in the decades to come, that I had been wrong, that it was a chain with larger and larger links: the neighborhood was connected to the city, the city to Italy, Italy to Europe, Europe to the whole planet. And this is how I see it today: it's not the neighborhood that's sick, it's not Naples, it's the entire earth, it's the universe, or universes. And shrewdness means hiding and hiding from oneself the true state of things.

How many who had been girls with us were no longer alive, had disappeared from the face of the earth because of illness, because their nervous systems had been unable to endure the sandpaper of torments, because their blood had been spilled.

Writers above all have such a great role in revolution, because their power is in their voices, their ability to move and influence. They, more than anyone, do not have the privilege to stay silent.

"Don't be timid. You're a writer, use your role, test it, make something of it. These are decisive times, everything is turning upside down. Participate, be present."

With her, there was no way to feel that things were settled; every fixed point of our relationship sooner or later turned out to be provisional; something shifted in her head that unbalanced her and unbalanced me.

Maybe, I thought, I've given too much weight to the cultivated use of reason, to good reading, to well controlled language, to political affiliation; maybe, in the face of abandonment, we are all the same; maybe not even a very orderly mind can endure the discovery of not being loved.

Then he asked me, in his usual good-humored way: why are you so willing to let your erotic pages be called "risqué," why do you yourself describe them that way in public? And he explained to me that I shouldn't: my novel wasn't simply the episode on the beach, there were more interesting and finer passages; and then, if here and there something sounded daring, that was mainly because it had been written by a girl; obscenity, he said, is not alien to good literature, and the true art of the story, even if it goes beyond the bounds of decency, is never risqué.

I had fled, in fact. Only to discover, in the decades to come, that I had been wrong, that it was a chain with larger and larger links: the neighborhood was connected to the city, the city to Italy, Italy to Europe, Europe to the whole planet. And this is how I see it today: it's not the neighborhood that's sick, it's not Naples, it's the entire earth, it's the universe, or universes.

Since the publication of the acclaimed My Brilliant Friend and The Story of A New Name, Elena Ferrante's reputation has grown enormously. Her novels about the friendship between Lila and Elena, about the mysteries of human relationships, are utterly compelling. In Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, the two protagonists are now in their thirties. Lila, married at sixteen, has left her husband and the comforts of her marriage, and has now joined the workforce. Elena has left the neighbourhood in Naples, been to university, and published a successful novel, all of which has brought her into a wealthier, more cultured world. Both women are seizing opportunities to flee a life of poverty, ignorance and submission. Yet they are still very much bound to each other by an unbreakable bond.

The Neapolitan Novels, Book Three

marlisa

it cant possibly have taken you this long to realise that man is a WHORE

Stas

I would probably rank third in the series so far. A bit slow (and maybe simple?) compared to the first two. 

Tom Koss

Eva Ströberg

Elena Ferrante - Those who leave and those who stay
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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Book number 3 is still dazzling all the way although my fave is the number one and the number two. The love-hate relationship between Lenu and Lila continues, now well into the adult life. Lenu is married and has 2 daughters and living in Florence, while Lila is still in Naples with Enzo. 
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They don’t talk much in this book, everyone is busy with their own lives but the ghosts of the past keep haunting back, the Solaras, Nino and the others
.
I can’t wait to read number 4

Elisavet Rozaki 

Maria

“each of us narrates our life as it suits us” 
what more can i say about these books that hasn’t already been said, except for the fact that i am amazed every time how easy it is to slip back into elena and lila’s stories, how impossible it is to put the book down once i pick it up.

and she continued to never pull a fucking punch

lauren amitirigala

It is, in my opinion, the best Neapolitan Novel, albeit the most frustrating one. It follows Elena breaking free of the chains that she has used to repress her feelings and illustrates her discovery of feminism and the notion of women and men so vividly, brings forth many intelligent arguments from different perspectives tackling different issues arising from the intricacies of feminism and the political landscape of the time; only to finalize in her love for a man making her abandon her ideals, or maybe to discover them anew, start afresh: an act of rebellion for the first time in her life. 

The discussions on politics are as outdated as they're timeless: showing us that the nature of people and the political ideas has not changed a bit in half a century. I loved, though, some of the passages related to the perception of politics from the eyes of women.

Sheds light on the battle inside the mind of a women between independence and love, while also portraying men exactly as how they are: frenzied creatures overwhelmed with lust, and approaching every single notion with that same frenzy; and approaching women like a snake, sucking their intelligence and wit and leaving them with poison. (Yes, I'm talking of Nino Sarratore: who has proven himself to be an exact replica of the father he once claimed to despise)

What I love the most about this book, however, is how it depicts the two self-actualization journeys of the main characters: Elena who is discovering her own identity and separating it from Lila and her formed notion of a pleasant woman, displaying independence; and Lila losing her idealism in the face of the cruelty of the real world, confining her intelligence to where it benefits her, where she can use it comfortably, while also understanding the importance of home and family. They slowly turn into each other, while growing close and growing apart just the same. I am very excited of what awaits them in the final book. Ferrante, you have ruined me, I love you.

It is, in my opinion, the best Neapolitan Novel, albeit the most frustrating one. It follows Elena breaking free of the chains that she has used to repress her feelings and illustrates her discovery of feminism and the notion of women and men so vividly, brings forth many intelligent arguments from different perspectives tackling different issues arising from the intricacies of feminism and the political landscape of the time; only to finalize in her love for a man making her abandon her ideals, or maybe to discover them anew, start afresh: an act of rebellion for the first time in her life. 

The discussions on politics are as outdated as they're timeless: showing us that the nature of people and the political ideas has not changed a bit in half a century. I loved, though, some of the passages related to the perception of politics from the eyes of women.

Sheds light on the battle inside the mind of a women between independence and love, while also portraying men exactly as how they are: frenzied creatures overwhelmed with lust, and approaching every single notion with that same frenzy; and approaching women like a snake, sucking their intelligence and wit and leaving them with poison. (Yes, I'm talking of Nino Sarratore: who has proven himself to be an exact replica of the father he once claimed to despise)

What I love the most about this book, however, is how it depicts the two self-actualization journeys of the main characters: Elena who is discovering her own identity and separating it from Lila and her formed notion of a pleasant woman, displaying independence; and Lila losing her idealism in the face of the cruelty of the real world, confining her intelligence to where it benefits her, where she can use it comfortably, while also understanding the importance of home and family. They slowly turn into each other, while growing close and growing apart just the same. I am very excited of what awaits them in the final book. Ferrante, you have ruined me, I love you.

kayla 

Julia Lundberg 

moon ramirez

esperanza 

This ending... what am I supposed to feel about this? I'm pretty sure I hate it.....

Set in the late 1960s and the 1970s, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay continues the story of the feisty and rebellious Lina and her lifelong friend, the brilliant and bookish Elena. Lina, after separating from her husband, is living with her young son in a new neighborhood of Naples and working at a local factory. Elena has left Naples, earned a degree from an elite college, and published a novel, all of which has opened the doors to a world of learned and fascinating interlocutors. The era, with its dramatic changes in sexual politics and social costumes, with its seemingly limitless number of new possibilities, is rendered with breathtaking vigor. This third Neapolitan Novel is not only a moving story of friendship but also a searing portrait of a rapidly changing world. Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, the first of the Neapolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante’s fame as one of today’s most compelling, insightful, and stylish authors has grown. She has gained admirers among authors, artists, and critics. But her most resounding success has undoubtedly been with readers, who have discovered in Ferrante a writer who speaks with great power and beauty of the mysteries of belonging, human relationships, love, family, and friendship.

The behaviour of men in this book got me so angry, it got me suspended - permamently - on Twitter (prayer circle, manifesting, etc. getting my account back). Elena Ferrante could single-handedly give all the rights to the girls with toxic defining friendships that will define them for the rest of their lives and take them away from men.

Is this my favourite entry of the series? Maybe not. But Ferrante never fails to elicit strong emotions within me at the things her characters go through and make me care deeply about their well-being. Both Lila and Lenu's realities were excruciating, Lenu's perhaps feeling all the more relatable to myself. The grasp also of how intelligent men and leftist spaces could still be misogynistic - a hard learned lesson for many even nowadays. I am constantly astonished at how well Ferrante knows the inner world of women and how effectively she manages to convey it through the quartet.

The behaviour of men in this book got me so angry, it got me suspended - permamently - on Twitter (prayer circle, manifesting, etc. getting my account back). Elena Ferrante could single-handedly give all the rights to the girls with toxic defining friendships that will define them for the rest of their lives and take them away from men.

Is this my favourite entry of the series? Maybe not. But Ferrante never fails to elicit strong emotions within me at the things her characters go through and make me care deeply about their well-being. Both Lila and Lenu's realities were excruciating, Lenu's perhaps feeling all the more relatable to myself. The grasp also of how intelligent men and leftist spaces could still be misogynistic - a hard learned lesson for many even nowadays. I am constantly astonished at how well Ferrante knows the inner world of women and how effectively she manages to convey it through the quartet.

I have grown so attached to the Neapolitan series, and needless to say, to the way Ferrante writes. I have found home in the complexities of the characters and nuances of the relationships they share. Cannot wait to pick up the fourth and final book!

Vaishali Batra

Andrew Louis

What was more implicit in the previous books becomes explicit.

i dont know how elena ferrante makes ordinary life so interesting

Ann Goldstein

Set in the late 1960s and the 1970s, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay continues the story of the feisty and rebellious Lina and her lifelong friend, the brilliant and bookish Elena. Lina, after separating from her husband, is living with her young son in a new neighbourhood of Naples and working at a local factory. Elena has left Naples, earned a degree from an elite college, and published a novel, all of which has opened the doors to a world of learned and fascinating interlocutors. The era, with its dramatic changes in sexual politics and social costumes, with its seemingly limitless number of new possibilities, is rendered with breathtaking vigour. This third Neapolitan Novel is not only a moving story of friendship but also a searing portrait of a rapidly changing world. Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, the first of the Neapolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante's fame as one of today's most compelling, insightful, and stylish authors has grown. She has gained admirers among authors, artists, and critics. But her most resounding success has undoubtedly been with readers, who have discovered in Ferrante a writer who speaks with great power and beauty of the mysteries of belonging, human relationships, love, family, and friendship.

Mounir Bashour

Possibly the fastest pace of any of the books so far. What I can tell you is on a personal level I dislike both main characters, particularly the narrator.

Emma Friedheim

So clearly I have finally been pulled in by the story and can't stop reading. These books are so rewarding and painful. I so badly want a happy ending that I doubt will come. This book was wonderful and flew by; I unsurprisingly began reading the fourth (and final! boo) book immediately. I will save my final brava for the conclusion, but I really believe this is one of the most truthful portrayals of a woman's mind I have ever read. Heartbreaking and uplifting and frustrating and inspiring. Satisfying books are such a delight.

Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, the first of the Neapolitan novels, Elena Ferrante's fame as one of our most compelling, insightful, and stylish contemporary authors has grown enormously. She has gained admirers among authors--Jhumpa Lahiri, Elizabeth Strout, Claire Messud, to name a few--and critics--James Wood, John Freeman, Eugenia Williamson, for example. But her most resounding success has undoubtedly been with readers, who have discovered in Ferrante a writer who speaks with great power and beauty of the mysteries of belonging, human relationships, love, family, and friendship. In this third Neapolitan novel, 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 of 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 mystery, 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 see each other by a strong, unbreakable bond.

The Neapolitan novels : middle time

Those who leave and those who stay

Fraser Simons

Another unputdownable novel in the series. The best parts feel revelatory, as they pick up in medias res from where you leave off. Memoir, possibly some measure of Autofiction, if people knew anything verifiable of Ferrante. 

Off the back of the last two, which feel very much to me like a duology, we fall into a malaise mirroring middle book syndrome that feels like the passion and decisive insight gleaned by the two and fro of happiness and sadness evaporate. This seems to be the number one complaint of this, but when the shift occurs outside of this, it feels just like the previous books, the reasons for which would be spoilers. But I thought then and think now that the intentional choice of sinking the reader into the change in writer is bold and worked very well. The form mirrors the characters emotions, the same as the personality and emotions experienced before. It is undeniably less observant and keen, blunted to make a point. I found it worked for me. I still could not stop reading. Though I did think it may end up less successful. 

Instead it rockets up to the same highs that always seem to be provided. For a reader that doesn’t derive much pleasure from the macro construction of a narrative, I could see why this wouldn’t be as good. For me, had the middle period not been constructed as it was, I don’t think the end of this one would have hit just as well. The second book is still my favourite, but it’s kind of like saying the first book and this third one is *only* 5 stars, where the second is 10. And that high because of the counterpoint to the first. Leaving me to wonder if the last book will similarly be in counterpoint to this, augmented to an almost arbitrarily too-high height.

Angbeen Abbas

i love these books so much - thus far this is my favourite one from the series. i can never recommend em enough.

Kwan Ann Tan

minus one star because I hate Nino so much

Melody Izard

I need to read that last book. But ... it's the last book and I'm not sure I'm ready to let Lila and Elana go. They are both out of their cultural confines, but both are not sure where to go from here. And they cling and push each other, love and hate each other, help and smash each other.

Ioana-Alexandra Predan

The evolution of the friendship between the girls and the dynamics of the world is fantastic. Loved every page of it.

Dora Tominic

Disclaimer: this is not a review

Summer tradition consisting of laying on Zlatne stijene reading Ferrante and watching the series with mom. Each summer contemplating my split being between Pula and Berlin. What the fuck is a decision? Too strongly identifying with Elena Greco and the intensity of the feelings which small town uses to draw you in and never let you go. The question remains: is enjoying big city anonymity just another sign of, oh, so familiar, cowardice? 
I love my mom. 

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

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