Elena Ferrante again. The third in the Neapolitan Novels series. (For posts on the previous two, see here, here, and here.)

This one came out in 2013, and there's an interesting divergence in the titles of the translations. The English version is "those who leave and those who stay", which doesn't quite render the sense of the Italian original ("the story of those who flee and those who stay"). The German title translates as "the story of the separate ways", which again misses something of the urgency of the Italian. The French version, meanwhile, goes for "the one who flees and the one who stays", which is quite close to the original; and the Spanish version goes off at a complete tangent with "the debts of the body"...

There's no Indonesian translation of this volume yet, so I couldn't repeat what I'd done with the first two. And again, the Italian e-book was crazily expensive. So I watched Season 3 of the HBO television adaptation first (in Italian with English subtitles), and then I listened to the audio-book in German (translated by Karin Kriege, and very nicely read by Eva Mattes).


Italy, 2019

The TV series, like its predecessors, was well executed, and picked up plenty of plaudits. Taylor Antrim: "The best yet... stunning in its 1970s detail"; Rebecca Nicholson: "A good-looking drama, cinematic in its ambitions, again taking its visual cues from a particular period of film history (this season’s director, Daniele Luchetti, has said he was inspired by John Cassavetes and 70s US cinema)".

Again very faithful to the text, it tells a powerful story of division.

Italy is divided (fascists, communists, and every gradation in between). The left is divided (workers versus intellectuals, a conflict powerfully illustrated by Lila's resentment when less hands-on characters try to take up the cudgels over working conditions in the sausage factory).

Class divisions still draw a line right through society: Lenu will never be entirely free of her roots; and Pietro, her new husband, will never be entirely free of Lenu's roots either. The gulf between the genders seems as insurmountable as ever. Even in academic households like Lenu's, she finds her intellectual work devalued, and she's not safe from domestic violence.

The neighbourhood where Lila and Lenu grew up is increasingly divided as well -- into Solara turf and non-Solara turf. The family is in the process of coopting everyone -- even, eventually, Lila, who takes on a management role in Michele's new data-processing venture. Lenu's sister, Elisa, now lives with Marcello, and the rest of the Greco family also benefits from Solara largesse. When the book closes, Signora Solara has just been murdered, and full-scale reprisals are about to begin.

And Lenu and Lila are divided, as never before. For much of the book, Lenu is in Florence, and Lila in Naples. But they're also divided by Lila's utter unpredictability. She well and truly shafts Lenu, for example, at the farewell meeting with Professor Galiani. She takes the side of Nadia and Pasquale when they criticize Lenu, allows the teacher to humiliate her friend, even contributes to that conversation -- and yet, when the two exit, she's all about how horrible Galiani is. There's never a stable point; Lila changes with the flick of a switch -- or, alternatively, she is thinking out and operationalizing incomprehensible long-term strategies, with Machiavellian foresight and determination.

Not for the first time, Elena wishes Lila dead at this point. And when she tells Lila how well her first pregnancy has gone, only to then have everything go awry, and her baby turn out to be impossible to manage, she wonders again about Lila's powers of evil...

Lenu is much more vocal now, much more willing to defend herself. But she still exhibits this curious intellectual dependence on her friend. When she cannot get her ideas together for a second novel (a situation not helped, of course, by babies, nappies, and a completely unsupportive husband), she calls on Lila. But the charm doesn't work this time. She writes her story (about the murder of Don Achille), but no-one likes it, and it goes nowhere.

And then we have the divider par excellence: Nino. Lenu reconnects with him at the book launch where we left her at the end of the second novel. She's happy in his company, and undoubtedly things would have sped on at that point if Pietro, her husband-to-be, had not rolled up with an announcement of a university appointment and an engagement ring.

Nino is still charming. More charming, actually, because he seems less vain. But he is still a deeply questionable figure. At root, Nino is a serial abandoner of women... Lenu knows about Nadia and about Lila. In the early part of this book, she meets Sylvia, who's now stuck with Nino's child.

After that initial book launch, he goes to ground for a long time, but then he re-emerges. He's back in Naples, is married to a rich wife, Eleonora, and is the father of Albertino (at least he must know about this one...). He's also on the same academic circuits as Pietro, so it's only a matter of time before he rolls up in Florence, creating havoc in Lenu's life. She is all too ready for havoc, of course. Bored, dissatisfied, disappointed, she's already had a couple of tiny flings. When Nino reappears, it's as though all the dams are breached.

Nino always used to hate his father, but actually he uses the same playbook -- insinuating himself into households, being helpful and understanding, being nice to the children...

He and Elena eventually replay the dare that Lila once put forward: You leave; no, you leave.

And they do, at the end of the book, burn their bridges, and leave their respective partners. No, you want to say. Don't do this; you know he's unreliable; you have every reason to believe he'll abandon you. Leave Pietro, by all means. Leave your kids, too, if you must. But DON'T GO OFF WITH NINO...!!



Ferrante's set pieces -- weddings or family gatherings -- are nothing short of magisterial. The outstanding example in this volume is that excruciating reunion lunch (engineered by the Solaras to fete their mother, advertise Lila's new role, and generally exert power and influence in a mass manipulation exercise).

So many power equations... Michele takes the opportunity to extol his mother's virtues, and praise Lila (with whom he is utterly obsessed)... Seeing Pietro apparently enthralled by Lila, does Lenu fear another Nino incident? Yes, but only fleetingly. At that point, she is more conscious of the way Michele completely and utterly sets Lila at the apex of the social pyramid -- with Lila's absolute consent. Lenu's mother feels this acutely, and is desperate for her daughter to reclaim superiority, but she stays silent. It's Elisa who reestablishes her sister's status with news of the German edition of her novel. Later, Pietro tells Lenu that Lila is the worst of the whole bad lot... Is this his defence mechanism, because he has felt her power? He does put his finger on the weirdness of the relationship between these "friends", though. Lila hates you, he warns...

It is after this visit that Lenu feels that she and Lila really have gone their separate ways. Ruefully, she acknowledges that Lila, the one who stayed, is the one who is doing new things, in a new world, earning kudos and big money. She wonders whether she has missed out on everything by leaving. She is stuck in a very old, traditional world, as a wife and mother. Lila's life is dynamic, whereas Lenu's is sadly static.

Lenu finally manages to get a new writing project together, examining the way men constantly set themselves up as shapers of women... But dominating her life at this point is the relationship with Nino.

Lila, like the rest of us, is horrified by Lenu's decision to go away with Nino. She says Lenu is crazy to leave her husband and children. She says Lenu is crazy to throw all this away for Nino. NINO... He'll exploit you, suck you dry, and then leave you. All true. But then it becomes more personal. Why did you study, she asks Lenu. Why did I imagine you'd have a wonderful life -- and live it for me too? You're crazy, and I was wrong.

Is she jealous? Or just concerned and genuinely disappointed? What part of her viscerally needs Lenu to be successful -- to be the "brilliant friend"?



There are two very obvious differences between the book and the series. As with Season 2 of the TV series, the framing story has been dropped. It goes like this: Lenu sees Lila five years before the time she's now writing (in 2005, when they'd be 61). They don't feel that comfortable with each other. They're told that a dead woman has been found in the square by the church. It's Gigliola, Michele's erstwhile wife. With that heads-up, you listen out for Gigliola in the text, and she acquires a dark significance that she doesn't have in the series. From pre-marriage confusion (she veers between considering herself incredibly lucky and incredibly unlucky to be marrying Michele) to post-marriage disaster (it's a highly unstable and vulnerable Gigliola who makes her uncomfortable mark at the grand reunion lunch involving the Solaras, the Grecos, Lila and so on), the book charts the story of a full-blown personal tragedy, whereas the series largely glosses over Gigliola.

The ending, likewise, parts ways. In the series, Elena, heading off with Nino, looks in the mirror, and sees her future self (the older Lenu we meet at the beginning of the first series). She greets her placidly. It's a "bring it on" kind of look.

In the book, Lenu walks out, and joins Nino for her first experience of flying. And that's where we leave them. We learn nothing further about Gigliola's death. And we have no looking-to-and-blending-into-the-future scene.

In both cases, the book is stronger, I feel.



According to James Wood, the Neapolitan Novels were originally supposed to be a trilogy. I haven't yet read the book that came along as Number 4. But for sure it would have been a tragedy to wind it all up with Number 3...

Because the third volume leaves us with some pressing questions:

-- How long will Lenu-and-Nino last? I'm guessing it will be weeks rather than months...

-- And what is Lila playing at...? She claims she's driving this relationship with the Solaras, but is that true?

It also presents us with some more existential questions that no amount of sequels are going to solve:

-- What are women supposed to be like, and who says so? Feisty? Maternal? Sexually obliging? Once you have children, Ferrante implies, you're pretty much shafted, unless you have a really rare and fabulous partner. Can this pattern ever be broken?

-- How do authors live with their work? It's not an easy ride for Elena as a young novelist. Her book is selling well, and it gains her status with Pietro's family, the Airotas. But it also makes life difficult for her. The people in her home neighbourhood find it scandalous; the people on the left find it trivial; and at least two men think it's a statement that she's prepared to sleep with them... We wonder whether she will ever create again.

-- Can intellectuals ever speak for workers? Massive question.

-- Can dominant families ever be tamed? The Solaras are execrable, but we also have the Airotas (far more benign, of course, but still beyond accountability, and able to pull far too many strings).

-- And... can Lila and Lenu ever escape from each other? Victoria Zhuang: "One woman is always leaving the other behind... Whoever is faltering in the given moment chases the other down to beg for her support, yet every conversation is inevitably tense, full of bluffing, accusations, and denials, because the balance of power could shift at any moment -- a new reversal is often lurking just around the following corner of the sentence. At some point it becomes impossible to tell who is chasing whom."

Brilliant work... After a short interval, I will be addressing the fourth and last.