This is the second of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, and it was published in 2012, just a year after the first part, My Brilliant Friend.

I initially wanted to read this in Italian, but the e-book was insanely expensive. So, as with the previous one, I read it in Indonesian (for a fraction of the price). This translation, by Maria Lubis, came out just this year. I then continued my multi-media experience by watching Season 2 of the TV series (having already watched Season 1, which corresponds to the first volume).

I really enjoyed the first book, but I liked this one even more. The structure -- a series of incidents, which are then contemplated, and mined for significance -- works really well for this kind of psychological work. Once Lila's and Lenu's stories diverge, various artifices (notebooks, visits, conversations, and so on) are needed to hold the stories together, and provide the context for them. Nevertheless, it's a very dramatic read, full of violence and hatred, oppression and fear. You finish it in a state of exhaustion, worn out by so much emotional turmoil, so much angst. It is as though you are waiting on the edge of your seat, wondering what terrible blow these characters -- who are so little constrained by social or legal rules -- are going to inflict on each other next.

The book begins with a framing device. Several years after her wedding, Lila (now named not Cerrullo but Carracci) gives Lenu a box full of notebooks to look after, claiming that if her husband, Stefano, finds them, he'll kill her. Lenu is not supposed to read the notebooks, but does. She finds them profoundly unsettling, and eventually destroys them. Then, drawing on these notes, and on later conversations with Lila and others, she reconstructs what happened after the Carraccis left the wedding reception with which the first book closed. The TV series dispenses with that opening, and the notebooks are introduced only later, which works less well, I think.


Polignano a Mare, 2019. Pretty much dead east of Amalfi, where the Carraccis had what it's something of a misnomer to call a honeymoon

The profoundly shocking wedding night scene -- complete with violence, menace, and rape -- sets the stage for the disintegration of Lila's marriage. And that Stefano can have changed SO much SO quickly is one of the queries I have about the book... At one point in the first volume, he seemed determined to change the old feuding mindset, to bring a breath of fresh air to the neighbourhood. And he seemed ready to respect Lila and her choices. But by the end of her wedding day, Lila hates him.

Constantly floating in the background is the question of heredity and inescapability. Was it simply inevitable that Stefano would turn out cruel, like his father, Don Achille? ("Is it possible that our parents never die, and that all children inevitably conceal their parents within them?") And, if Stefano, and Lila's own father and brother, are to be believed, the Solaras -- the source of the wedding day canker -- are there to stay; their power and sense of entitlement will never be expunged. Lila will somehow have to learn to live with them, and a major thread in this book and the subsequent one is how she goes about doing that.

Stefano is trapped in this violence as well. Baffled by his wife, he confides to Lenu one day: "She has a power within her that I cannot subdue. It's like an evil force that makes good behaviour -- everything -- useless. Poison. You see that she's not pregnant? ... With the powers that she has, she kills the children in her womb." Lenu listens to him with growing sympathy... She has wondered about Lila's powers in the past too...

In a way that the series can't, the book constantly shows us the complexity that results from the narrator's never quite knowing what Lila is up to (she's always up to something), and being constantly caught up in an inward dialogue as to how to react to it. Should she pity Lila, or be angry with her manipulative ways? Envy her, or rejoice in the strength she radiates?

Lenu is also aware that she takes on Lila's thoughts, unconsciously. She feels, for example, that her clear-eyed view of the predicament of the local women is influenced by Lila: "That day, I saw the mothers in the old neighbourhood clearly. They were restless, they were weak. They were silent, their lips thin and their shoulders hunched, or they were screaming terrible insults at the children who tormented them... And my God, they were ten -- at most 20 -- years older than me." Domestic violence is a normal part of their experience.



The unfathomability of the Lila character continues to grow, and I think this comes across better in the book than the series. She is never, it seems, too far from toppling over into something resembling madness. And her Machiavellian streak is always stirring things up, riling or beguiling people. She complains about the origins of the Carracci and Solara money -- but she herself learns to cheat her customers; and because she has to be the best at everything, she becomes the best cheat too. Yet she's generous, helping her old friends, and buying Elena's school books, when Maestra Oliviero can no longer step in. When Elena has another of her periodic scholastic crises, she offers her space to study, and encourages her to learn.

A pivotal scene, however, takes place at Professor Galiani's house, where Lenu has been invited to a party, and Lila has offered to come with her. Lila ends up acutely uncomfortable when she finds herself not only in a different class, where she has no hope of competing, but also outshone by Lenu, whose reputation for smartness has preceded her. Lila vents her frustration, with brutal sarcasm, in the car on the way home, and Lenu hates her for it. For a long time Lenu stays aloof, but when Lila goes to the doctor, and is told she needs to become "stronger" in order to become (and stay) pregnant, Lenu's hatred subsides in face of this hidden weakness. This is a pattern that keeps on being repeated.

During the holiday on Ischia (organized so that Lila can get "stronger"), the gap between educated and non-educated opens up again when former classmate Nino appears with his friend Bruno (both are university students). Lila is piqued by the distance between them -- he and Lenu can have conversations that she can't join in -- and so she starts reading again. And of course, the inevitable happens. Quick to understand, quick to exploit her new knowledge, she attracts the attention of Nino, thereby poaching on the territory that Lenu has quietly but perceptibly marked out as her own. She learns to swim -- brilliantly, of course, so that she is able to compete with Nino, and leave Lenu behind. And then Nino kisses Lila: "I loved you long before your husband did," he tells her, "ever since we had that competition in class." Lenu regrets that she never told Lila honestly about what she felt for Nino (and yet Lila must have guessed, Lila MUST have guessed...) "That kiss," thinks Lenu, "It wasn't a choice. It happened mainly because Lila knows the way to make something happen." When the relationship becomes deeper and bolder, Lenu realizes she hates them both.



The extent to which Lila was marked by that fateful party is re-emphasized in this section. Nino is still in theory going out with Nadia, Professor Galiani's daughter. Lila is brutal about this woman: "Do you love her? Why? Explain to us. Is it because she lives in Corso Vittorio Emanuele in a house full of old books and pictures? Because she speaks in a ridiculously low voice? Because she's the daughter of the teacher?"

It's worth noting here that Nino in the book comes over much worse than Nino in the TV series. During the intellectual conversations that initially entrance Lenu, and make her obsess about him even more, he regularly exhibits vanity, and an insecure small-mindedness. If he cannot be the master of a conversation, he's not interested; he cannot accept that Lenu might know something he doesn't. Nevertheless, Lenu loves him, and Lila has stolen him...

It is Nella, Lenu's host on the island in the previous book, who tries to open her eyes to the qualities of her friend: "One glance is enough for me to judge people. Signora Lina knows that you're better than she is, so she doesn't love you the way you love her... She knows how to wound. It shows in her face." But Lenu still wrestles with what has happened: "Lila deserved Nino... because she thought that loving him meant trying to have him, not just hoping he would want her."

You constantly wonder about the relationship between these two women. Is there actually any love? Or only bitterness, envy, and competition?

When Lila spends the night with Nino, Elena, confused and stricken, allows the ghastly Donato (Nino's father, who harassed her in the previous book) to become her first sexual encounter. It's a grotesque mimicking of Lila's actions, and it's something she feels embarrassed about years later -- but it does ultimately constitute the germ of her first novel.



Lila, now pregnant, leaves Stefano, and goes to live with Nino (again, the events surrounding this move are much more complicated in the book than in the series). And again, I guess I wonder what happens to Ferrante's men... Because Nino turns bad extraordinarily quickly... He gives up everything, and falls apart. He then returns to his studies, only to find he can't accommodate Lila in his life (they are together for just 23 days...). He criticizes her behaviour at political meetings (she talks too loudly, answers back when someone asks her to be quiet...); he complains about the noise in the building; and he regrets his situation "with this woman, who is married, and pregnant, who throws up every morning, who keeps him from being disciplined". He reproaches her: "You mess up my ideas. You're like a drop of water, drip, drip, drip. Until everything goes your way, you won't stop." Do whatever you want, he tells her, "but don't try to become something you're not by ruining me". And he leaves. It's possible he might have gone back, had he not been beaten up by Antonio (Lenu's former boyfriend, now working for the Solaras). Antonio warns him away, and he takes heed, but Antonio doesn't reveal Lila's whereabouts to anyone except Enzo.

Lila, encouraged by Enzo, returns to Stefano, who resolutely believes the baby is his. Unsurprisingly, there's no saving this marriage, though, especially as Stefano now has Ada as his mistress, and she's pregnant. Lila and the baby move in with Enzo, and she starts to work in the fairly hellish environment of Bruno's sausage factory.

Bruno... Now, there's another man gone bad. On the island, he seems so courteous towards Pinuccia (also part of the group), and is not overly persistent with Elena (whom he likes). But then he turns into this horrible person who eyes up the staff with a droit-de-seigneur sense of entitlement...



Lenu, meanwhile, has gone to Pisa to study. She struggles somewhat. Mocked for her Neapolitan accent, she finds it difficult to fit in with the (mostly higher-class) students. Many of us have been there... But she is helped by her boyfriend, Franco, and later she meets Pietro, and is warmly received by his posh academic family. She writes a book, which is published by Pietro's mother's company. She graduates. She becomes engaged to Pietro.

Throughout all these apparent successes, however, she seems to suffer from a kind of imposter syndrome, as though she's still in Lila's shadow, always believing that she's not really the clever one. At one point, she says: "Suddenly I became aware of the word almost. Have I succeeded? Almost. Have I distanced myself from Naples, from my surroundings? Almost. Have I made new friends, men and women, from cultured backgrounds, more cultured than those of Professor Galiani and her children? Almost. From one exam to the next, have I become a student who is well regarded by the gloomy professors who questioned me? Almost." She seems to live off the reflected glory of her boyfriends -- first Franco, then Pietro. She doesn't seem to be able to summon self-esteem of her own.

Nevertheless, the closing chapters paint a harrowing divergence. Elena, back at home, receives a parcel containing her old school notebooks from the estate of her late teacher, Maestra Oliviero. Among the papers is the story Lila wrote as a child -- The Blue Fairy, the one the teacher pretended to think nothing of, but actually obviously appreciated (and if Maestra Oliviero had encouraged Lila at the time, instead of brusquely warning Lenu away from her, you wonder how different things would have been...). Lenu realizes what a debt she owes to Lila for inspiring the "secret heart" of her own book, and she feels her resentment melting away. She goes to look for her friend, taking the manuscript with her. It's a terrible journey, right back into the worst of the city she has tried to escape from. She eventually finds Lila, working in the foul-smelling sausage factory. Her hands are callused and sore (and she already has her usual rep for trouble-making). It's a huge contrast -- not only between Lila and Lenu, but also between Lila at the beginning of the book and Lila at the end. When Elena tells Lila about her successes, you can't help feeling she is being a bit cruel and vengeful... But Lila does have Enzo. He has not gone wrong -- yet, anyway... He studies maths in the evening; she helps him; he inspires her with new ideas like computer programming. She has her child, whose future she is trying to make different from her own. When Lenu turns to go, Lila puts The Blue Fairy on the fire.

The final scenes show Lenu's book launch in Milan. She's nervous, of course, desperate for support, lacking confidence, unsure what to say in face of a hostile audience member. And then someone else speaks up, praising the "modernizing force" of Elena's novel. It's Nino... He's back.



So... A great read. It both continues and adds depth to all the key themes of the first volume (the gender wars; the treadmill of working-class violence and exploitation; the pivotal role of education; the changing economic times).

And it digs its scalpel a bit further into that extraordinary friendship. James Whitmore makes an interesting comment to the effect that "our closest friendships are a kind of Faustian pact". (Remember that Faust quote at the beginning of the first book?) He continues: "In the first novel it seemed clear to me that Lenu’s fortunes were on the rise while Lila’s were in descent, in fact Lila (widely described as a kind of devil incarnate by other characters) had performed a kind of sacrifice to aide her friend’s escape from the poverty of the neighbourhood. Broadly I still think the same, but there are more complicated ideas lurking around the edges. It no longer feels possible to describe their relationship as a one-way bargain, or of one kind. While Lenu physically escapes the neighbourhood, she remains intellectually attached to its traditions. Lila may be trapped -- in her marriage, in the neighbourhood, in webs of crime -- but her mind possesses a freedom of thought and expression that Lenu is besotted with and ruinously envious of."

Season 2 of the TV series follows its predecessor in hewing very close to the book, although with the inevitable drawbacks I talked about last time. But the visuals have a lot more to work with in this series. There's plenty of sixties glam, and the seaside scenes, in particular, are mesmerizing. Very much worth watching, even if you've read the book.

So, I'm definitely hooked. There's no way I won't be finishing this series of novels...