THOSE WHO LEAVE & THOSE WHO STAY: THE NEAPOLITAN NOVELS, BOOK 3 Paperback

THOSE WHO LEAVE & THOSE WHO STAY: THE NEAPOLITAN NOVELS, BOOK 3 Paperback

Those Who Leave & Those Who Stay continues the sequence that began with My Briliant Friend

OVER 14M OF THE NEAPOLITAN QUARTET SOLD WORLDWIDE

“Nothing quite like this has ever been published before.”―The Guardian

“This is high stakes, subversive literature.”―The Daily Telegraph

• PUBLISHER : Text Publishing (25 February 2015)
• LANGUAGE : English
• PAPERBACK: 416 PAGES
• ISBN : 9781925240023

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.

Quelli di voi che hanno seguito le sorti delle amiche (e talvolta rivali) Lila ed Elena fin dall’infanzia – in un quartiere accidentato della Napoli del dopoguerra – non rimarranno delusi da questo impressionante terzo romanzo. Come prima, è raccontato dal punto di vista di Elena con tutta l’onestà, la ferocia, la fluidità emotiva e l’intensità che ci si aspetta da questo straordinario autore.

Le due donne – che in senso psicologico sono due metà di uno stesso essere complesso – si stanno avvicinando ai trent’anni. Le loro fortune fluttuano. Nella prima parte, mentre Elena si stabilisce a Firenze e viene festeggiata come scrittrice premiata, Lila lavora in un salumificio. Si sta logorando, si ammala, vive con Enzo in una relazione platonica e alleva suo figlio. Viene coinvolta in problematiche relazioni industriali in fabbrica – che riflettono preoccupazioni sociali più ampie – che attira persone della cerchia di Elena, la famiglia Sarratore, e ne è quasi distrutta dalla violenza. Elena arriva dalla sua confortevole vita borghese a Firenze per prendersi cura di lei e per riconnettersi.

Nella seconda metà del romanzo l’attenzione è più concentrata sul matrimonio problematico di Elena e sui progressi come scrittrice. Nonostante desideri essere prima una scrittrice, poi moglie e madre, con due figlie piccole si impantana nella vita domestica. Suo marito mette al primo posto il suo lavoro accademico e non si collega completamente con lei; il loro è più abrasivo di un matrimonio amoroso, sebbene abbiano i loro momenti; ma Elena ne rimane soffocata e trova difficile scrivere il suo secondo romanzo. Gli eventi per lei si spostano verso un finale esplosivo quando una figura, una passione, del passato rientra nella sua vita e la accende. Deve affrontare il più difficile di tutti i dilemmi per una donna: chi mettere al primo posto, i propri figli o l’amante senza il quale non si può vivere?

Al centro di questo romanzo forense e avvincente c’è l’amicizia complessa e multistrato tra le due donne. Le loro differenze sono sempre più evidenti. Lila è più rude, disinvolta ma più scaltra, intelligente e carismatica di Elena, le cui aspirazioni intellettuali e borghesi vengono messe alla prova. Molti dei personaggi che abbiamo incontrato nei romanzi precedenti – circoli sovrapposti della società napoletana – fanno apparizioni di sfondo o cameo, dando un’idea di come le amiche e le vicine dell’infanzia delle donne si siano espanse nei circoli del commercio, del potere locale, dell’influenza e della corruzione.

ENGLISH:

Those Who Leave & Those Who Stay continues the sequence that began with My Briliant Friend – Lila & Elena are now in their thirties

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.

Those of you that have followed the fortunes of close friends (and sometimes rivals) Lila and Elena from their childhood – in a rough district of a post-war Naples – will not be disappointed with this impressive third novel. As before, it is told from Elena’s point of view with all the honesty, ferocity, emotional fluency and intensity we’ve come to expect from this extraordinary author.

The two women – who are in a psychological sense two halves of the same complex being – are now approaching their thirties. Their fortunes fluctuate. In the first part, while Elena is setting up house in Florence and being feted as a prize-winning novelist, Lila is working in a sausage factory. She is wearing herself out, making herself ill, living with Enzo in a platonic relationship and bringing up her son. She gets caught up in problematic industrial relations at the factory – reflecting wider social concerns – which draws in people from Elena’s circle, the Sarratore family, and she is almost broken by the violence of it. Elena arrives from her comfortable, middle-class life in Florence to take care of her and to reconnect.

In the latter half of the novel the focus is more on Elena’s problematic marriage and progress as a writer. Despite wishing to be a writer first, wife and mother second, with two small two daughters she gets bogged down in domesticity. Her husband puts his academic work first and doesn’t fully connect with her; theirs is a more abrasive than a loving marriage, though they have their moments; but Elena becomes stifled by it and she finds writing her second novel difficult. Events for her move to an explosive finale when a figure, a passion, from the past re-enters her life and ignites it. She has to face that most difficult of all dilemmas for a woman – who to put first, one’s children or the lover one can’t live without?

At the heart of this forensic and compelling novel is the complex, multi-layered friendship between the two women. Their differences are increasingly apparent. Lila is rougher, courser but more streetwise, clever and charismatic than Elena, whose intellectual and middleclass aspirations are put to the test. Many of the characters we met in the previous novels – overlapping circles of Neapolitan society – make background or cameo appearances, giving a sense of how the friends and neighbours of the women’s childhood expanded into circles of commerce, local power, influence and corruption.

NOTE: in some rare cases the cover image may vary slightly, the image is for illustration purposes only
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