The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante

The second novel in the series describing the relationship between Lila and Elena is even more intense than the first. It’s a painful book to read but utterly engaging. It charts Lila’s marriage to Stefano, which collapses inevitably into violence as the limited character of the husband finds himself completely out of his depth with no capacity whatsoever to understand the brilliance of his wife. He resorts, of course, to violence and brutalityThere is the sense throughout that this is the inescapable pattern of life in Naples at that time. And only Lenu seems capable of escaping it, the pathway out through education. The story investigates love, almost as something that can never be properly realized, as a figment of the romantic imagination. Every one of the ‘loving’ relationships in the book is marred by one thing or another. I am particularly loving the discussion of the role of language in Italian society. It’s a market of class and education, and the movement between dialect and Italian beautifully describes Lenu’s passage out, her lack of confidence in who she is and where she fits. Really, you could spend a whole semester studying the ideas that this book raises and still barely have scratched the surface. I’m already champing at the bit to get onto book three.