The Story of a New Name, by Elena Ferrante

Staff review by Chris Saliba

Confessional in style, the second volume of Ferrante's Neapolitan novels investigates life's inner turmoil in great detail. 

The Story of a New Name is the second volume in Italian author Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan series of novels. A fourth book, The Story of the Lost Child, is due for release in Australia this September. Elena Ferrante writes her novels pseudonymously. Her real name and identity remain a mystery, apart from the rare print interview she has given. Unusual in our times, Ferrante guards her privacy jealously.

The novel opens with Lila married to Stefano and running various small businesses. The marriage is a turbulent one. Lila is not happy and the couple fight. The narrator, Elena Greco, is still studying and looking to improve herself through education, thereby hoping to establish some sort of emotional and financial independence. At all costs Elena wants to avoid falling into the pitfalls of many of her contemporaries: poverty, poor prospects, ignorance, the bickering politics of the local neighbourhood and abusive marriages. Surrounding the two young women, Lila and Elena, are a group of characters that are intertwined into their lives: local thugs, moneylenders, businessmen, Communists, students and crazy in-laws. None of them are friends really; they are more all in a desperate struggle to get ahead, ready to trample on each other if necessary.

Ferrante’s style in this second volume is confessional. Her fiction reads as deeply personal and (perhaps, we can only speculate) intricately autobiographical. This is the sort of storytelling that can spend pages and pages parsing one character’s throwaway comment for deeper meanings. There is not much action per se, but each character’s internal life is so turbulent that it provides for the bulk of the drama. It’s this deep investigation into life’s inner turmoil that constitutes the great strength of Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. Her writing is very real, touching on many deep wounds, perhaps uncomfortably so for many people.

The Story of a New Name, by Elena Ferrante. Published by Text. ISBN: 9781925240016  RRP: $22.99

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My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante

Staff Review by Chris Saliba

The first in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan series of novels makes for addictive reading. 

My Brilliant Friend is the first in the series known as the Neapolitan novels by Italian author Elena Ferrante. Four novels in total comprise the series. Next to nothing is known about Ferrante herself, who writes under a pseudonym. When she first approached her literary agents, she stipulated that she didn’t want her identity revealed. She has said that "books, once they are written, have no need of their authors."

The story centres around two young girls, Lila and Elena, growing up in a poor neighbourhood of Naples in the 1950s. Lila is rather feisty and independent, but also brooding and mysterious. Elena, who narrates the novel, aspires to be a writer. She thinks herself somewhat dull and prosaic compared to the mercurial Lila. She also finds herself at odds with the local Neapolitan youths. They are variously violent, mad and uncouth. She yearns for something better, but also knows she is made of the same stuff as her contemporaries and can never really escape. It is this fact that gives the novel its ironic, contradictory and resigned tone. Elena wants to leave all of that behind her, but she knows she can’t. Her Neapolitan roots are an elementary part of her being. The same goes for Lila, who finds herself more and more deeply entwined within the local Neapolitan culture. 

I tend to think My Brilliant Friend is the kind of novel you’re either going to love or loathe. It’s irresolute, vacillating style is sure to drive some mad. It covers in minute detail a period of about five years, where not much happens besides tiresome fights, arguments, inter-family feuds and personal failures. For myself, I found it compulsive. What I loved about the novel was its style, a mix between Dostoyevsky and Emily Bronte. It has Dostoyevsky’s mad, contradictory dialogue and Emily Bronte’s dark and crazed characters. Once you get into the book’s style and you figure out its purpose, which is to evoke life’s perennially unresolved nature, then I think Ferrante’s prose becomes addictive. I’ll be intrigued to see if this mood holds when I start reading the second novel, The Story of a New Name.  

My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante. Published by Text. ISBN: 9781925240009 RRP: $22.99

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