Book Two of the Neapolitan Novels

"[Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels] don't merely offer a teeming vision of working-class Naples, with its cobblers and professors, communists and mobbed-up businessmen, womanizing poets and downtrodden wives; they present one of modern fiction's richest portraits of a friendship." —John Powers, Fresh Air, NPR 

The second book, following 2012’s acclaimed My Brilliant Friend, featuring the two friends Lila and Elena. The two protagonists are now in their twenties. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila. Meanwhile, Elena continues her journey of self-discovery. The two young women share a complex and evolving bond that brings them close at times, and drives them apart at others. Each vacillates between hurtful disregard and profound love for the other. With this complicated and meticulously portrayed friendship at the center of their emotional lives, the two girls mature into women, paying the sometimes cruel price that this passage exacts.

Elena Ferrante
Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008), and the four novels known as the Neapolitan Quartet (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child) which were published by Europa Editions between 2012 and 2015. My Brilliant Friend, the HBO series directed by Saverio Costanzo, premiered in 2018. Ferrante is also the author of Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey (Europa, 2016), a children’s picture book illustrated by Mara Cerri, The Beach at Night (Europa, 2016), and a collection of personal essays illustrated by Andrea Ucini entitled Incidental Inventions (Europa, 2019). The Lost Daughter will be made into a feature film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and starring Olivia Colman. Her most recent novel is The Lying Life of Adults (Europa, 2020). In the Margins, a collection of original essays on reading and writing, was published by Europa in 2022.

• Dec 9 2015
  The Best Book I Read This Year
  — The Atlantic
• Nov 3 2015
  The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante Translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein
  — James Reads Books
• Sep 28 2015
  "It’s raw and brilliant, with a light that shines unblinking on its characters.”
  — The Phraser
• Sep 20 2015
  "Are Ferrante’s books autobiographical, as everyone speculates? Yes, perhaps: we all have difficult friendships; but these also seem to be about different aspects of the same person."
  — Mirabile Dictu
• Sep 19 2015
  "The prose isn't pretty or elegant: the English translation (by Ann Goldstein) is terrifically simple and understated . . . But it's the power of the emotions bleeding through the words that grips you."
  — The Idle Woman
• Sep 13 2015
  "Ferrante is able to evoke a world that [. . .] is both ‘fresh’ and ‘alive’, full of mystery and beauty, and one that deserves to be read and re-read."
  — Bookish Ramblings