The Story of a New Name: My Brilliant Friend Book 2: Youth (Neapolitan Quartet, 2)

This second book opens with a brief prologue then returns to where the first one ended, at Lila's wedding at the age of 16. I don't want to say anything else about the plot which would spoil it for other readers, but Ferrante continues her completely absorbing paean to female friendship: a friendship which is complicated, contradictory, which ebbs and flows as life forces a separation between Lila and Elena yet never succeeds in breaking their bonds. This is, effectively, a subversive love story where, despite the men who come and go, the central sustaining love at the heart of the book is that between Lila and Elena, a love which lasts, we know, from when they were children playing with their dolls till they are old women - though not without its tensions, jealousies and competitions. The other magnificent character is the small, dirty, violent, macho, working-class neighbourhood of Naples - and the interactions between environment and character are crucial. In this book, critical events happen outside: the summer holiday at Ischia, Elena's move to university in Pisa, but, like the women's essential relationship, they remained tied in complex ways to the neighbourhood. It's difficult to express quite how all-absorbing these books are: suffice to say, I've forced myself to read this slowly so as not to finish it too fast - even though there are places where I've just wanted to turn the pages faster and faster to see what happens next! These are such rich books, so intelligent about women lives (wild Lila's obsession with erasing herself, whether through physical displacement or the destruction of her wedding picture) but also just so gripping. The claustrophobia of the setting, the violence of macho-patriarchy, the revelations of Lila's life give a febrile intensity to this book - I'm going to have a slight break but will be turning to book 3 very soon.

Fascinating insight into life in post-war Naples, focussing on children growing up in a poor neighbourhood. It is written in first person by a woman, Elena, looking back at her youth, and in particular, examining her friendship with Lila, an intelligent, enigmatic girl form the neighbourhood. Their paths diverge at the point where one stays on at school and the other leaves before going to middle school. However, they remain in contact and Elena tells the story of her relationship with Lila and the contrasting events in their lives. I found it a compelling read, but found some of the sentence formation and grammar rather clunky: is this the translation from Italian, or problems with the original text? I suspect the former. However, I was driven to read the next two books in the trilogy, though I believe it will become a quartet in September 2015, as this first novel ends on something of a cliff-hanger which leaves the reader wanting to know the next part of the saga!

Amazing

Fantastic writing! This story of an unusual friendship, described very deeply and full of surprising twists and turns, managed to warm my heart to the main characters in the Italian village, even when I couldn't quite understand them, keeping me on my toes regarding the family members and other inhabitants. I became very familiar with all of them, as if I had met them in person. Although the story happened not so long ago, in the 20th century it feels like another day and age, when not all people were able to write, and didn't have the rights we take for granted. It was only when I came to the end of the book, reading more and more slowly as I didn't want it to end, that I discovered there are 3 books that follow this fascinating friendship from early twenties into adulthood.

I enjoyed the start of this book but a third of the way through it started to get tedious. It tells of a friendship that is almost love and hate between two girls brought up in the same Neopolitan neighbourhood. It contained some violence and also love stories. For me it contained too much classical history detail but perhaps I am not high brow enough. I did finish it but would not recommend it.

I enjoyed My Brilliant Friend and all it revealed of Naples in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Best of all I loved the exploration of the friendship and lives of the 2 protagonists. This 2nd book takes these themes to a new level and allows us to see the role of class. Politics and education in its various manifestations and the rewards and costs of education. Opportunity and hard work are counterpointed with fate and choice. Then add the ingredients of family, love and friendship, and now we have the unbeatable combination that drives Ferrante's story telling in the context of the changes and developments in Italy in the 1960s. Hard to put it down! I will look forward to the next 2 volumes with a certain pleasure and great admiration for such a deep rich writer of our times.

Personagens envolventes, muito bem escrito, amei!

De hele serie is adembenemend - als je eenmaal begint, wil je alle boeken achter elkaar lezen wat ik ook gedaan heb dus zorg dat je tijd hebt om dit te doen. Het geeft een bijzondere inkijkje in de samenleving in Napels en hoe een vriendschap een rol kan spelen in je hele leven. Zeer de moeite waard !!

This is the second book of a quadrilogy the author wrote about the friendship of two women that lasted all their lives. In the first book - "My Brilliant Friend" - the author narrates their childhood in the slums of Naples, Italy, soon after the II W.W. In this book she follows them in their adolescence and precocious young years; the story will continue in the last two with their adoolthood and old age. It is the friendship between Lina and the narrator Lenù. For deep psychological reasons, Lenù falls under the spell of her friend Lina, in spite of her unpleasant character. And so it happened to me, and after the first book I had to go on, and I bought the four of them. It's a frienship made of love and hatred, of jealousy and envie. The two girls grow up in a world of misery, filled with anger and frustration; entangled in a net of violence and ingnorance.The only way to escape is through money or education. Some merchants have become rich through the black market of their parents practiced during the war. Now it is their choice to make. So the two teenagers soon learn to desperately grab their moment of happiness, even risking their lives. It's a powerful portrait of the two main characters, through the intelligent self analysis of the narrator, and a deep psychological insight into her friends'demons. Lenù narrates their story following the details of their every day life. These facts seem to be banal, instead they are poignant in building the extraordinary character of Lina, and every event is charged with a powerful tension. The narration flows easily, never boring. The reader is captivated and feels like never putting down the book. While giving us the portrait of Lina, who seems to embody Good and Evil, the narrator paints also her neiborhood and its many characters which form a portrait of human existence itself and an excellent study of the human soul. An amazing story of an amazing frienship, where one, the narrator, tries desperately to be like her savage friend, and feeling inferior, she sacrifices herself and her choices to live her life through Lina. At the same time, Lina realizes that is Lenù who has made the right choice. Two desperate human beings who try to find a balance, try to reach beauty, a moment of happiness and the fullness of life among the frears, the banalities and the entanglements of their existence.

My book arrived sooner than expected and was as described. Very good.