"Partly because her work describes domestic experiences – such as vivid sexual jealousy and other forms of shame – that are underexplored in fiction, Ferrante’s reputation is soaring, especially among women (Zadie Smith, Mona Simpson and Jhumpa Lahiri are fans). Lila begins to hide money, eventually rents an apartment for Nino. It broke my heart so badly that I had to stop reading it for a few days to recover.Elena Ferrante is an absolute marvel. [beginning of the first book is extremely important. Their love hate relationship grows more intricate, so does their intellectual competition. It continues the story (from My Brilliant Friend) of two besties in 1950s Naples who take (and I won't say choose) different paths in life. This book blew me away. Since Lila is very beautiful and she is wearing Cerrullo shoes, Michele asks if they can take the photo, enlarge it, and hang it in the store.
Nino sees Elena a few times, and is always kind; once he actually kisses her on the cheek, but the next minute he is kissing his girlfriend.
Welcome back.
The night Nino and Lila are together, Elena goes to the house that Nino’s family is staying at, and sleeps with Nino’s father, Donato.After their night together, things unravel as Elena is shocked that they would carry on with Lila married. And yet you’re constantly left with the feeling that no one has ever done what she does before. Soon it’s too hard to find a place to see him, so she manipulates the men into letting her work at the shoe store; Nino sees her there in the afternoon when the store is closed for the hottest part of the day. I have gone over the half-way mark. I will definitely write more here but first I want to know what happens next, so now I am on to next book.
Although I struggled through this volume, listening to the voices of teens talking about their confusion and noting their lack of confidence while they strode boldly ahead, all was forgiven in the last one hundred pages.Such whirlwind of emotions, it just doesn't give me the chance to settle down. Will review when I can collect my thoughts (and get some sleep).
Rino and Stefano come on the weekends and go back to Naples for the week. The Peluso’s father dies in prison, and the mother kills herself soon after. If you were to say no, your father would beat you and disown you. He recommends a vacation. Their relationship deteriorates further.
Elena is confused and depressed and feels she will never match the class of the girl he is kissing.Stefano refuses to hang the photo; Elena pushes Lila to join her in school, but she is pregnant.
Elena has a wonderful time at the party, but as Stefano is driving the girls home, Lila is extremely rude and cruel, belittling Elena and making her and her friends look foolish. One escapes the brutal poverty and gratuitous violence of the neighborhood, the other sticks her toe into different lives but cannot escape her fate. Her son is very smart, and she and Enzo are working on something new together in their spare time. (Nunzia to Lenù, p.215)"For your whole life you love people and you never really know who they are." She is very distracted from Lila’s wedding. She is pregnant, she demands that he forces Lila out; he won’t. Geeee, Holy moly...."PEDAL TO THE METAL"!!!!! This question is all that keeps an element of surprise to the book! I adore these characters and would read 100 books about them.I tore through this in a kind of furious curiosity, annoyed with myself for being so involved and annoyed with Ferrante for taking so long to do what she does. The Solaras have also invested in Stefano’s new grocery store. Lila helps Stefano in the grocery store, although Michele Solara thinks she would be effective working in the new shoe store. The effect is as though Doris Lessing spent a season guest-writing for When we get to the end of the second book in Ferrante’s quartet of novels, we think we see the genesis of that quartet: a twenty-day writing exercise that took the angst out of university graduation for Elena Greco, also called Lenù. Just before she leaves for Pisa, she happens to stop by the shoe store on the Piazza to see if Lila is around.