Neapolitan Novels

"My Brilliant Friend" redirects here. For the TV series, see My Brilliant Friend (TV series).

Neapolitan Novels

My Brilliant Friend The Story of a New Name Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay The Story of the Lost Child
Author	Elena Ferrante
Original title	L'Amica Geniale, Storia del Nuovo Cognome, Storia di chi fugge e di chi resta, Storia della bambina perduta
Translator	Ann Goldstein
Country	Italy
Language	Italian
Publisher	Edizioni e/o Europa Editions (English publisher)
Published	2011–2014
Published in English	2012–2015
No. of books	Four

The Neapolitan Novels, also known as the Neapolitan Quartet, are a four-part series of fiction by the pseudonymous Italian author Elena Ferrante, published originally by Edizioni e/o, translated into English by Ann Goldstein, and published by Europa Editions (New York). The English-language titles of the novels are My Brilliant Friend (2012), The Story of a New Name (2013), Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2014), and The Story of the Lost Child (2015). In the original Italian edition, the whole series bears the title of the first novel L'amica geniale ("My Brilliant Friend"). The series has been characterized as a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story. In an interview in Harper's Magazine, Elena Ferrante has stated that she considers the four books to be "a single novel" published serially for reasons of length and duration. The series has sold over 10 million copies in 40 countries.

The series follows the lives of two perceptive and intelligent girls, Elena (sometimes called "Lenù") Greco and Raffaella ("Lila") Cerullo, from childhood to adulthood and old age, as they try to create lives for themselves amidst the violent and stultifying culture of their home – a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Italy. The novels are narrated by Elena Greco.

The series was adapted into a two-part play by April De Angelis at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, in March 2017. The Rose production, starring Niamh Cusack and Catherine McCormack, transferred to the Royal National Theatre in November 2019. The first three books in the series have been adapted into an HBO television series entitled My Brilliant Friend.

Synopsis

My Brilliant Friend (2011)

Main article: My Brilliant Friend

The Neapolitan Novels begin in 2010 when the son of an old friend telephones the main character, a woman in her 60s named Elena (familiarly called "Lenù"). Elena's childhood friend Lila (a nickname for "Raffaella") has disappeared and removed all traces of herself from her household, and her son is unable to find her. Elena recognizes this behavior as something Lila, in her later years, has always talked about doing, and believes her disappearance to be a conscious decision. In the spirit of their loving but ambivalent ways towards each other, Elena begins to put on paper everything she can remember about Lila, beginning in 1950s' Naples.

Elena and Lila grow up in a poor neighborhood full of violence and strife, where Lila alone realizes that an innocent man has been framed for murder by local gangsters, the Solara family. No one expects the girls to be educated beyond elementary school. Elena is diligent and captures the attention of maestra Oliviero, one of her primary school teachers, a spinster who encourages her to escape the life of the impoverished plebeian class. To everyone's surprise, the very rebellious Lila turns out to be a prodigy who has taught herself to read and write. She quickly earns the highest grades in the class, seemingly without effort. Elena is both fascinated and intimidated by Lila, especially after Lila writes a story which Elena feels shows real genius. She begins to push herself to keep up with Lila and ignores her teacher's warning not to associate with "plebs". Once, when Lila throws Elena's doll into the basement chute of the local loan shark, Elena does the same to Lila's doll, as proof that she can be as bold as her friend. When Lila fearlessly goes to the loan shark to ask for the return of the dolls, Elena goes with her, though they are ultimately unable to retrieve them.

The paths of the two girls diverge when Lila's parents refuse to pay for further education after elementary school. After being pressured by the concerned teacher, Elena's father agrees to pay for Elena to continue studying, which angers her bitter, jealous mother. To prove her worthiness, Lila secretly takes the middle school exam, which so enrages her father that he throws her through a glass window one floor above the courtyard. After recovering from her injuries, Lila encourages Elena to skip school in an attempt to get Elena's parents to withdraw their support for her education. But Elena forgives Lila, knowing how hard it is for Lila to be left behind while she moves forward. Elena attends middle school and eventually high school. Lila insists that Elena, being Lila's brilliant friend, should never stop studying.

With Elena studying, Lila occupies herself with her father's shoe shop. Much to his irritation, she dreams of designing new types of shoes to make them rich. She also grows very beautiful, attracting most of the neighborhood's young men, including Marcello Solara, the young son of the powerful local Camorra leader. Despite being pressured by her family to marry Marcello, Lila resists because she considers the Solaras to be fundamentally evil. To escape Marcello, she accepts Stefano Carracci, the owner of the local grocery, when he asks her to marry him. After the Carraccis sweeten the deal by agreeing to finance Lila's shoe project, her family agree to the marriage. Lila and Stefano marry when she is sixteen. At the wedding, Elena, who has been dating Antonio Cappuccio, a car mechanic, is repelled by the boisterous behavior of the "plebs". Stefano breaks two promises to Lila by inviting the Solara brothers to their wedding reception and by selling them the shoes that Lila and her brother handcrafted and that Stefano told her he would treasure forever. Lila considers the marriage over as soon as it begins.

The Story of a New Name (2012)

Main article: The story of a new name

No longer feeling anything for Stefano, Lila is cold to him during their marriage. Stefano beats and rapes her on their honeymoon, causing a further rift. The Solaras gradually take over the increasingly lucrative shoe project, and Lila, despite rebelling, is forced to help them with the shoe shop.

As Lila continues to rebel in different ways, both her family and her in-laws worry about her not having become pregnant yet. Her doctor blames it on stress and prescribes a vacation. Lila, desperate to not be alone with her mother and sister-in-law, talks Elena into coming with her. Elena, who is doing very well in school and has fallen in love with a haughty older boy called Nino Sarratore, agrees on the condition that they go to a particular beach resort, knowing Nino will be there. Elena is naively unaware of Nino's lack of interest in her and of his jealousy of her writing talent. Soon Elena and Lila are increasingly spending their days with Nino. Surprisingly, it is Lila and Nino who fall in love with each other and begin an affair, even using Elena as their common confidante. Feeling dejected, Elena gives in to the advances of Donato Sarratore, Nino's father, who takes her virginity.

As the vacation comes to an end, Lila finally becomes pregnant, and she and Nino plan to live together. However, their affair is brief, as Nino comes to resent Lila's intellect and abruptly leaves her. Lila eventually returns to her husband Stefano. After giving birth to a son, she becomes obsessed with the idea that early childhood education is extremely important and tries her best to teach her son to read and write. After discovering that Stefano is having an affair with Ada Cappuccio, Lila finally decides to leave him for good. She escapes to a smaller, more run-down neighborhood with Enzo, a childhood friend who is in love with her and has promised to protect her.

Elena graduates from high school with no concrete plans. She hears about the world-renowned university Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and successfully passes the entrance exams. Elena has a difficult time there because of her obvious poverty and because she is sexually active. Eventually, she meets Pietro Airota, who is an awkward and dry but kind and proper intellectual from an important family. The two become friends, and upon graduation, he proposes to Elena, who accepts. Before graduation, Elena writes a small story based on her life which contains a fictionalized account of the night she lost her virginity to Donato Sarratore. Elena gives it to Pietro as a present. He, in turn, gives it to his mother, Adele, who passes it along to a publishing house, which immediately accepts it. The book leads to financial success and critical acclaim for Elena. To her disappointment, no one from her childhood neighborhood mentions the book except to comment on the sexual passages, and not even Lila shows any interest in it.

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2013)

Main article: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

Before her wedding, Elena sees Lila briefly and learns that she is working in a sausage factory where she is constantly brutalized and sexually harassed. Lila has fallen in love with Enzo, and they are both studying computer programming, but she refuses to let their relationship turn sexual since she does not want to become pregnant again. After Elena helps her obtain the pill, Lila does consummate her relationship with Enzo. Meanwhile, Elena, who did not want to have children until after writing a second book, becomes pregnant right away. A few years go by, and Elena does manage to write another book before the birth of her second daughter, but after Lila and Adele tell her it is no good, she decides to abandon the project and devotes herself to being a wife and mother.

Elena runs into Nino again when her husband Pietro brings him home. She discovers she is still attracted to him despite the fact that he abandoned her friend after their love affair. Inspired by his attention, she writes a feminist text which Adele deems worthy of publication. She and Nino start an affair, which makes Elena realize she is unhappy in her marriage and convinces her to leave Pietro.

Elena shares her plans with Lila, who is horrified. Although Lila now realizes that her son, who she believed was Nino's, is actually biologically Stefano's, she still harbours resentment towards Nino and views him as an empty, wasteful person. Lila's fortunes are on the rise: she and Enzo now work successfully as computer programmers. Lila is tempted to work for Michele Solara, who remains so obsessed with her that he is willing to pay her an exorbitant salary. Elena learns that her younger sister is sleeping with Marcello Solara.

The Story of the Lost Child (2014)

After several months of strife, Elena finally succeeds in leaving Pietro. However, she learns from Lila that despite promises that he had also left his wife, Nino has done no such thing. Despite an initial attempt to break up with him, Elena eventually decides to accept Nino the way he is and moves with her daughters to Naples so she can be closer to him. She becomes pregnant with Nino's child at the same time Lila conceives a daughter with Enzo. They give birth to daughters one month apart. Lila names her child Tina, the same name as Elena's long-lost doll, while Elena names her daughter Imma, after her mother, who dies of cancer shortly after her granddaughter's birth. Overwhelmed with the responsibilities of raising three daughters, Elena finds herself in financial difficulties despite help from Pietro and Nino. One day she discovers Nino having sex with her housekeeper, and then learns from Lila that he has continued to have multiple affairs with many women, both before and during their time together, even propositioning Lila. Disgusted with Nino, Elena finally finds the strength to break up with him for good.

In the midst of this turmoil, Elena tries to finish a third book she has been contractually obligated to write, but having no time she simply sends her publisher the book she wrote when she was pregnant with her middle child, a thinly veiled account of her childhood, expecting it to be rejected. The publisher is instead hugely supportive, considering it a great work.

Encouraged by her publisher, Elena and her children move into an apartment just above her old friend Lila. She realizes that the neighbourhood has severely changed from when she grew up. Many people, including Elena's own brothers, are now involved in the selling and using of drugs for the Solaras, while Lila is considered a saviour in the neighbourhood, the only one who can stand up to the Solaras and who employs people in her computer business, helping to take them away from drugs.

The success of Elena's book causes trouble for the Solaras, when a newspaper article reveals it contains fictionalized accounts of their illegal dealings. The Solaras bring a lawsuit against Elena through Carmen Peluso, her childhood schoolmate, and their stranglehold on the neighbourhood seems more vicious than ever. After Michele hurts Lila, Lila gives all the proof of their illegal dealings to Elena and together they write a piece documenting the crimes of the Solaras. Elena realizes this will do nothing to stop them, but Lila has it published anyway, only to become bitterly disillusioned when all it does is grant Elena more fame.

Shortly after, Elena asks Nino to reappear and be part of their daughter's life. During an outing with all the children, Tina mysteriously disappears. Enzo believes that the Solaras kidnapped and/or killed her, while Lila maintains that their daughter is still alive and might one day come back to them.

Elena and Lila continue to be increasingly alienated from each other as Lila despairs about her lost daughter. Elena, by then an even more famous writer, moves out of their childhood neighborhood for the last time. Lila becomes obsessed with the history of Naples and the cyclical nature of human life. Recognizing the seeming insignificance of it all, it somehow makes sense for her that it should be desirable to disappear without a trace, though this will be difficult in the new computer age. Decades pass, though they stay in touch, until Elena finally writes a small novel about their friendship. At that point, Lila shuts Elena out of her life.

Returning to the beginning of the series, Lila is still yet to be found with no new traces of her. One day, Elena receives in the mail the two dolls that they lost when they were children. As a child, Lila was envious of Elena's doll, which was nicer than her own homemade doll, and stole Elena's doll in such a way that Elena did not know that Lila was the thief. Elena muses on the possible meaning of their return.

Themes

Female Friendship

Central themes in the novels include women’s friendship and the shaping of women’s lives by their social milieu, sexual and intellectual jealousy and competition within female friendships, and female ambivalence about filial and maternal roles and domestic violence. Isabelle Blank wrote about the complex, mirrored relation between the protagonists Lenu and Lila: "Lenù and Lila are foils for one another. Lenù is blonde, studious, eager to please, self-doubting and ambitious, whereas Lila is dark, naturally brilliant, mercurial, mean and irresistible to those around her. The story is told from Lenù’s point of view, but the two friends understand one another on such a deep and complex level that the reader is often privy to Lila’s perceived inner thoughts."

The tension between Lila and Lenu is often considered the central point of the novels, as Matteo Pericoli wrote for The Paris Review: "From a structural point of view, tension and compression often meld into each another. In this building, two volumes are interwoven by strong connecting rods, extended columns and daring beams, with one of the two seemingly suspended from the other. With its mass and swirled dynamism, the suspended volume (that we will call Lila) seems to be slipping away from the one that is holding it up (that we will call Elena) making it extend and stretch as if it was Lila that was shaping Elena and providing her with her dynamic energy, so vital to any piece of architecture."

Suzanne Berne also wrote about the relation between the pair for the LA Review of Books, commenting on how they are perceived by critics: "Some reviewers see them as two halves of female creativity — the actualized versus the potential — or as inverse sides of the feminine psyche. Others view them as sisters in arms, struggling against the hostility and brutality of a male-dominated culture, or use them to ponder the line between fiction and nonfiction in these clearly autobiographical novels. One reviewer insists they are a Faustian pair, with Lila as the “genius demon.” But the real astonishment of this long, digressive, unclassifiable narrative is its portrayal of the dynamic experience of a close female friendship. A friendship, as registered through Elena, that changes page by page, sometimes sentence by sentence. And the question Ferrante finally forced me to ask is how that experience, in fiction, could feel so exalting."

According to The Guardian, this tensions goes beyong the relation between Lila and Lenu, encompassing all women in the narrative: "Ferrante’s subject – it is almost an obsession – is the way women are shaped, distorted and sometimes destroyed by their social milieu (and by the men around them). Voicing what can still seem unvoiceable, she delves into the darker tensions between daughters and mothers, the tug-and-pull of being a wife or a mother and wanting to retain some sense of independent self."

Class struggle

The novels also portray class struggle, especially in the context of Italian factory strikes of the 1970s. Writer Valerie Popp has written on the class portrayal in the novels "So I find that reading Elena Ferrante’s work affords me a rare pleasure: the pleasure of recognition. Here in the United States, the working-class dimensions of Ferrante’s work tend to get elided, ignored, or attenuated into something charming and “primitive” that the literary coterie—who, for the most part, are middle- or upper-class born—can admire from a distance."

Kunstlerroman

The novel's protagonist being called Elena invited readers to wonder how much her story has in common with the author's. As Katherine Hill writes in the Paris Review: "Most autofiction trades on the understanding that the author is just playing, or just theorizing, and not really revealing herself, but Ferrante’s work invites the opposite reading."

The question was posed by reader Paolo Di Stefano to Elena Ferrante in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, “how autobiographical is the story of Elena [Greco]?” Ferrante replied, in "her characteristically direct yet elusive manner, 'If by autobiography you mean drawing on one’s own experience to feed an invented story, almost entirely. If instead you’re asking whether I’m telling my own personal story, not at all'."

In addition, the story of becoming an author is entangled for Lenu with the two previous points: with her friendship with Lila, because it's her goal to compete with the friend, to prove herself worthy, that fuels her writing. And with class struggle because writing a successful novel was how the two of them dreamed, as little girls, of making money and escaping the neighborhood, and, in fact, how Lenu finally achieves that.

The city of Naples

According to Sarah Begley, writing for Time Magazine, the city of Naples itself is one of the main characters of the book, "portrayed in gritty detail throughout the novels." The city is portrayed in the novels as a place of violence, poverty and social unrest. Rutgers University Associate Professor Paola Gambarota has linked this portrayal to the issues the city experienced after being bombed during World War II, clat the Ferrante portrays well known issues, such as the black markets (through figures as the Carraci family) and the rising influence of the Camorra (through the Solara family). Gambarota says, “the socioeconomic situation in Naples…was worse than anywhere else.” Education was a luxury.

Reception

In 2019, The Guardian ranked My Brilliant Friend the 11th best book since 2000. The overall series was also listed in Vulture as one of the 12 "New Classics" since 2000.

Elissa Schappel, writing for Vanity Fair, reviewed the last book of the Quartet as "This is Ferrante at the height of her brilliance." Roger Cohen wrote for the New York Review of Books: "The interacting qualities of the two women are central to the quartet, which is at once introspective and sweeping, personal and political, covering the more than six decades of the two women’s lives and the way those lives intersect with Italy’s upheavals, from the revolutionary violence of the leftist Red Brigades to radical feminism."

In The Guardian, it was noted the growing popularity of Ferrante, especially among writers: "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)".

Darrin Franich has called the novels the series of the decade, saying: "The Neapolitan Novels are the series of the decade because they are so clearly of this decade: conflicted, revisionist, desperate, hopeful, revolutionary, euphorically feminine even in the face of assaultive male corrosion."

Judith Shulevitz in The Atlantic, praised particularly how the books cicle back to its start, to Lila and Lenu's childhood games, in the final installment. Maureen Corregan has also praised the ending of the novels, caling it "Perfect Devastation".

Awards

• My Brilliant Friend: Longlist of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
• The Story of the Lost Child: nominated for the Strega Prize, the most prestigious Italian literary award.
• The Story of the Lost Child; nominated for the International Booker Prize, raising the question if the award could be given to an anonymous author.
• The Story of the Lost Child; winned the 2016 ALTA Translation Prizes, in the category translations form Italian.

Book Covers

The book covers of the Neapolitan Quartet have long been dragged for their kitschness. Emily Harnett wrote for The Atlantic: "On Twitter and beyond, readers have described Ferrante’s covers as “horrible,” “atrocious,” “utterly hideous,” and as a “disservice” to her novels." The publishers have however defended the choice in an interview to Slate, claiming that "We also had the feeling that many people didn’t understand the game we were playing, that of, let’s say, dressing an extremely refined story with a touch of vulgarity."

Characters

Greco family

• Elena (“Lenù”) Greco (as an adult becomes a successful author)
  • two daughters, Adele (nicknamed 'Dede') and Elsa, b" The writer however has defended the covers in interviews, saying that y husband Pietro Airota
  • one daughter, Imma, by a later affair with Nino Sarratore
• Vittorio Greco (Elena's father, doorman at the city hall)
• Immacolata Greco (Elena's mother, housewife)
• Peppe, Gianni, and Elisa Greco (Elena's younger siblings)

Cerullo family

• Raffaella (“Lila” or “Lina”) Cerullo (as an adult runs a successful computer business)
  • one son, Gennaro (nicknamed 'Rino'), by first husband Stefano Carracci (not by Nino Sarratore, as she first thought)
  • one daughter, Tina, by second husband Enzo Scanno
• Fernando Cerullo (Lila's father, works in a shoe shop)
• Nunzia Cerullo (Lila's mother, housewife)
• Rino Cerullo (Lila's older brother, five to seven years older than Lila, works at the family's shoe shop)
• several unnamed younger siblings of Rino and Lila

Sarratore family

• Donato Sarratore (train ticket inspector and poet)
• Lidia Sarratore (Donato's wife, housewife)
• Nino Sarratore (their eldest son, two years older than Lila and Elena, as an adult is a professor and politically active)
• Marisa Sarratore (Nino's sister, of an age with Lila and Elena)
• Pino, Clelia, and Ciro Sarratore (younger children)

Carracci family

• Don Achille Carracci (owns and works in a grocery shop, former loan shark and black market agent)
• Maria Carracci (his wife, works at the family's grocery shop)
• Stefano Carracci (their eldest son, five to seven years older than Lila and Elena, works at the family's grocery shop)
• Pinuccia Carracci (Stefano's younger sister)
• Alfonso Carracci (Stefano and Pinuccia's younger brother, of an age with Lila and Elena)

Solara family

(the neighborhood's mafia, they own a bar as well as several other businesses, legal or not)

• Silvio Solara
• Manuela Solara (his wife, known as a loan shark)
• Marcello Solara
• Michele Solara

Spagnuolo family

• Gigliola Spagnuolo (of an age with Lila and Elena)
• Her father (pastry chef)
• Her mother (housewife)
• Gigliola's younger brother

Peluso family

• Pasquale Peluso (construction worker)
• Carmela (“Carmen”) Peluso (his younger sister, of an age with Lila and Elena)
• Alfredo Peluso, their father (carpenter)
• Their mother (housewife)

Scanno family

• Nicola Scanno (fruit and vegetables seller)
• Assunta Scanno (his wife, fruit and vegetables seller)
• Enzo Scanno (their eldest son, as an adult runs a successful computer business with Lila)
• younger children

Cappuccio family

• The late father Cappuccio
• Melina Cappuccio (the mad woman, in love with Donato Sarratore, cleans the neighborhood's buildings' staircases)
• Antonio Cappuccio (their son, works in a garage)
• Ada Cappuccio (Antonio's sister, helps her mother clean staircases, later works at the Carracci grocery shop)
• younger children

Airota family

• Guido Airota (Greek literature professor)
• Adele Airota (his wife, literary critic)
• Mariarosa Airota (their daughter, history of art professor in Milan)
• Pietro Airota (their son, also a professor, and Elena’s husband and the father of Elena’s two older daughters)

Adaptations

See also: My Brilliant Friend (TV series)

My Brilliant Friend, a two-part, five-and-a-half-hour stage adaptation of the Neapolitan Novels, opened at the Rose Theatre, Kingston in March 2017. The play was adapted by April De Angelis, directed by Melly Still, and starred Niamh Cusack as Lenu and Catherine McCormack as Lila.

A 32-part television series The Neapolitan Novels is also in the works and will be co-produced by the Italian producer Wildside for Fandango Productions, with screenwriting led by the writer Francesco Piccolo. On March 30, 2017, it was announced that HBO and RAI would broadcast the first eight episodes which are an adaptation of My Brilliant Friend, the first of the four Neapolitan Novels, and they premiered on HBO on November 18, 2018.

The series was also adapted for radio, produced by Pier for BBC Radio 4 and first broadcast in July 2016.

Bibliography

• L'amica geniale (2011; English translation: My Brilliant Friend, 2012). OCLC 778419313.
• Storia del nuovo cognome, L'amica geniale volume 2 (2012; English translation: The Story of a New Name, 2013). OCLC 829451619.
• Storia di chi fugge e di chi resta, L'amica geniale volume 3 (2013; English translation: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, 2014). OCLC 870919836.
• Storia della bambina perduta, L'amica geniale volume 4 (2014; English translation: The Story of the Lost Child, 2015). OCLC 910239891.

External links

• Elena Ferrante website page on My Brilliant Friend
• Elena Ferrante website page on The Story of a New Name
• Elena Ferrante website page on Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
• English-language website dedicated to the Neapolitan Novels
• "Elena Ferrante, Art of Fiction No. 228." Interviewed by Sandro and Sandra Ferri. Paris Review. Spring 2015. No. 212.
• "Elena Ferrante's Naples: A Visual Promenade." Le Nouvel Observateur, October 28, 2016. A tour of the novels' Neapolitan settings.
  • "Elena Ferrante's Naples: a photo essay" The Guardian, November 7, 2017.