Elena Ferrante: The Neapolitan Quartet

Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels are, as she's acknowledged, actually a single 1,700 page novel in four volumes about the lives of and relationship between two girls becoming women in Naples: Lina and Elena. I've never read anything quite like this. Is it like Trollope? Proust? Knausgaard? What is this creation? What does it mean and what do I do with it now that I've read it? When I first heard the buzz I resolved never to read the collection. Four books? So many pages? I could read Morrison, Pynchon, Chang, and Wallace instead. And I'm always suspicious of translation. But the buzz continued and got louder, became hype. People I respected recommended the series ... I gave in. First, I read her "memoir" Frantumaglia and thought it was brilliant. Likewise her second novel, Days of Abandonment; Ferrante's writing style was strong, fresh, unique and won me over. The Neapolitan Quartet  grew naturally from her earlier works (particularly the tightrope act that is The Lost Daughter -- the story Ferrante is closest to). So I read My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child. The first book is by far the shortest (and for her, the most arduous), so that Ferrante (like a drug dealer) can lure and hook the unwary reader. She's an immensely gifted storyteller, who establishes an immaculate tone for her story. She writes of strong women who, even though they're our heroines, are far (distant, even) from perfect. The four novels move through Childhood, Adolescence; Youth; Middle Time; and Maturity, Old Age. I see and make little distinction between the four books in terms of quality. They all seem of a piece, equally good and equally necessary. Having read one the reader must complete them all. Fortunately, they're an easy and quick read. The first person narrator of the books is the diligent, intelligent Elena, who becomes an author. She sees herself as the shadow of her indefinable friend Lina, the wild, undisciplined genius who inspires, goads, challenges, and threatens Elena. They are not simply opposites, but facets, permutations, different aspects of each other. We need both characters, both narratives. Both parts of Ferrante. Emotionally, it's an excruciating story to tell. Usually described as about a "friendship," that word is wholly inadequate for what comprises these four books and binds these two women. Here friendship is uncharted, unknowable, and uncontrollable. The two women are connected, but more by destiny and necessity than friendship. At least any friendship I've ever known. They are the witnesses to each others' lives. Two different people who are linked by equal amounts of good and bad, of love and chaos. They are bound by something in their DNA, their psyches, more like two junkies whose addiction is each other. At the same time, the stories of mothers and daughters saturate both the books and their lives. We learn that loss, complete and utter loss, is never far for women. For anyone perhaps, but especially for women, who always live on the edge as they (as we see with Elena and Lina) try to adapt to their changing conditions. In the danger and challenge of crossing borders, harms and wounds are inevitable. These are not just social novels, but political and historical ones as well. A setting in which Elena grows as Lina disappears, as we only know Lina's writing though Elena's, and we only know Lina though Elena's writing. Writing that tries to control the uncontrollable. All set in a very specific time and place, which is, paradoxically, accessible to everyone. All of which we get to taste in our experience of reading this autobiography, our experience of sharing Elena's and Lina's lives.  🐢