Girls, Girls, Girls

Elena Ferrante: The Story of a New Name

Part 2 of Ferrante's quadrology (as for my review of Part 1)... pure rock'n roll it is. Spoilers ahead.

The story begins at Lila's wedding with Stefano Carraci, right where the first book ended. Already during their honeymoon, Lila and Stefano descend into a cycle of provokation and abuse. After a while, however, Lila learns how to manage her violent husband and seems to be settling (or resigning) into the new circumstances. She gets pregnant but loses the baby.
Elena and her neighborhood boyfriend Antonio Cappucio break up, apparently due to to his upcoming military service but mostly due to Elena's continuing affection for Nino Sarratore. At school, Elena is being intellectually promoted by her teacher, Professor Gailani, whose daughter is dating Nino. Elena and Lila have their first longer term fallout after a party at Professor Gailani's place, where Elena moves elegantly in new intellectual circles, while Lila feels awkwardly left out (and jealous of Elena).
They reconcile and decide to spend summer holidays together in Ischia. The stay proves to be a decisive turning point for the two womens' story. Elena's secret intention behind the holidays is to be close to Nino, who is also in Ischia. In what is one of the most gripping parts of the novel, we see the slow unfolding of an affair between Lila and Nino. Elena, visibly under shock, reacts by spending a night with Nino's father. Another prolonged break ensues between Elena and Lila.
Elena gets accepted into university at Pisa, while Nino and Lila continue their affair. After running away from Stefano for a couple of weeks, Nino breaks up with Lila and she returns, pregnant, to her husband. In the coming years, Lila is all focused on raising her son Gennaro. At the same time, Stefano begins an affair with the sales clerk in his family's grocery.
The story ends with Lila running off with her long-term admirer, Enzo Scanno, and her son Gennaro. In order to make ends meet, Lila takes up work in a meat factory. While Lila and Enzo are not romantically involved, they seem to form an increasingly deep bond, united in studying together late at night. In the end of the story, Elena gets her first novel published, starting a promising literary career.

"My brilliant friend" was already a great read, but, in retrospect, it was no comparison to the second part of the Naples novels. The story really picks up pace, especially after Lila and Nino begin their affair in Ischia. As said before, Ferrante provides one of the best depictions of friendship and the lives of young adult's in all their complexity. The innocence that was still somehow there in Part 1 is lost. To use a concept introduced by Lila, the margins of the characters are "dissolving" in a microcosm of adultery, rivalry and violence. All this takes place against the contemporary social habits and politics of 1960's Italy which Ferrante so brilliantly depicts ... overall, nothing less than amazing. 

Random movie reference:
Difficult one. The whole dynamic between Elena, Lila and Nino kind of remotely reminded me of Noodles, Max and Deborah in Once Upon a Time in America. 

Favorite quotes: 
"I understood only later that I can be quietly unhappy, because I am incapable of violent reactions. I fear them, I prefer to be still, cultivating resentment. Not Lila." (Elena)

"I got low marks in chemistry, art history, and philosophy, and my nerves were so frayed that right after the last bad grade I burst into tears in front of everyone. It was a horrible moment: I felt the horror and pleasure of losing myself, the fear and the pride in going off the rails." (Elena)

"I started to borrow novels from the circulating library, and read one after the other. But in the long run they didn't help. They presented intense lives, profound conversations, a phantom reality more appealing than my real life." (Elena)

"Even if you are better than me, even if you know more things, don't leave me." (Lina to Elena)

"She had felt the need to humiliate me in order to better endure her own humiliation." (Elena about Lina after the party at Professor Gailani's which led to their fall-out)

"She was born like that, she could have learned the art of engraving merely by studying the gestures of a goldsmith, and then be able to work the gold better than he." (Elena about Lina)

"Neither she nor I would ever have him. But both of us, for the entire time of the vacation, could gain his attention, she as the object of a passion with no future, I as the wise counselor who kept under control both his folly and hers. I consoled myself with that hypothesis of centrality." (Elena about Lila when Lila's affair with Nino is about to begin)

"The more Lina is surrounded by affection and admiration, the crueler she can become. She's always been like that." (Elena to Nino about Lila)

"Naples had been very useful in Pisa, but Pisa was no use in Naples, it was an obstacle. Good manners, cultured voice and appearance, the crush in my head and on my tongue of what I had learned in books were all immediate signs of weakness that made me a secure prey, one of those who don't struggle." (Elena about her return to Naples)

"I understood that ... I had made the whole journey mainly to show her what she had lost and what I had won. But... she was explaining to me that I had won nothing, that in the world there is nothing to win, that her life was full of varied and foolish adventures as much as mine, and that time simply slipped away without any meaning, and it was good just to see each other so often to hear the mad sound of the brain of one echo in the mad sound of the brain of the other." (Elena about her meeting with Lina in the end of the book)

Girls just Wanna Have Fun

Elena Ferrante: My Brilliant Friend

This is the first part of Elena Ferrante's "quadrology" about the friendship between two Napolitan girls which spans multiple decades. A great, great read, and one of the best coming off age stories/ "Bildungsromane" I have read in recent years. I understand where the international hype around those books is coming from...

The story begins with the disappearance of Lila Cerullo, who has apparently realized her long-standing desire to escape from her life without leaving a trace. This event inspires her friend Elena Greco to tell "their" story, going back to the Napolitan neighborhood they both grew up in the 1950s.
Both girls come from simple backgrounds. Lila is the daughter of a shoemaker, Elena of a porter at the city hall. They start to bond when attending primary school. Even though Lila is the academically more successful, it is only Elena who gets to continue her education; Lila learns how to make shoes in her father and brother's shop. Lila gets increasingly sucked into the world of shoe-making, hoping to get rich through hand-made shoes designed by her and her brother Rino. At the same time, she keeps on studying with Elena, which, due to the ever-present rivalry between the two girls, pushes the latter to become an increasingly successful student.  
The love lives of the two girls become increasingly important in the later parts of the book. Marcello Solara, whose family owns a bar-pastry shop and maintains ties to organized crime, starts to pursue Lila, much to her disliking. In order to escape from Marcello, Lila turns towards Stefano Carraci, son of the late godfather of the neighborhood, but now seemingly making a decent living in his family's grocery store. Elena, in turn, is in love with the Nino, the son of Donato Sarratore, a railroad worker, poet and womanizer. Elena is especially attracted by Nino's intellectual side and the fact that he seems to have developed beyond the confines of their neighborhood. However, apart from a kiss during a holiday, nothing happens between the two. Ever jealous of Lila and her relationship with Stefano, Elena takes Antonio Cappucio, a local mechanic, as her boyfriend. Without providing too many spoilers, the story finishes with Lila and Stefano's wedding, which turns out to run different than anticipated....

The book provides a colorful depiction of the Napolitan neighborhood the two girls grow up in, to include the various families that live in it. It also offers great insights into the social conventions of the time, with for instance Lila only being able to escape the advances of Marcello Solara by getting married to somebody else. Admittedly, I am no expert on female friendships. Still, Ferrante delivers what is probably one of the most interesting depictions of friendship- in all its complexity- I have ever read. Lila and Elena are not only best friends for each other, but also rivals, role models (especially Lila to Elena) and surrogates allowing one to live the life she herself cannot have (Elena to Lina). Nothing less than impressive.

Random movie reference:
Something from the godfather. Raising the question of whether we can ever get over our heritage..

Favorite quotes:
"The thing was happening to her that she later called dissolving margins. It was- she told me- as if, on the night of a full moon over the sea, the intense black mass of a storm advanced across the sky, swallowing every light, eroding the circumference of the moon's circle and disfiguring the shining disk, reducing it to its true nature of rough insensate material." (Elena about Lila's idea of "dissolving margins")

"I was afraid of what was happening to her, good or bad in my absence. It was an old fear, a fear that has never left me: the fear that, in losing pieces of her life, mine lost intensity and importance." (Elena about Lina not writing during her holidays)

"Out of vanity he would hurt anyone and never feel responsible. Since he is convinced that he makes everybody happy, he thinks that everything is forgiven him." (Nino about her father).

"Nino has something that's eating him inside, like Lila, and it's a gift and a suffering; they aren't content, they never give in, they fear what is happening around them." (Elena about Nino)

"The beauty of mind that Cerullo had from childhood didn't find an outlet, Greco, and it has all ended up in her face, in her breasts, in her thighs, in her ass, places where it soon fades and it will be as if she had never had it." (Their former teacher about Lila)

"But now I felt good and I wanted to feel even better. When Antonio, guessing that I was in the right mood, asked if I wanted to be his girlfriend, I said yes right away, even though I loved someone else, even if I felt for him nothing but some friendliness." (Elena about her boyfriend Antonio)

"It had been very energizing to win praise from those who seemed to me better ... taking sides against those who seemed to me worse ... and yet to behave toward the adversaries in such a way as not to lose their friendship and respect." (Elena)

"I thought how contradictory she was, without realizing it, with her rages, with those imperious gestures. She hadn't wanted me to go to school, but now that I was going to school she considered me better than the boys I had grown up with, and she understood, as I myself did, that my place was not among them." (Elena about Lina)

"Yes, you're right, I don't know what I am and what I really want, I use you and then I throw you away, but it's not my fault, I feel half and half, forgive me." (Elena about her feelings towards Antonio)

Lost in Translation

Viet Thanh Nguen: The Sympathizer

My novel of the year up to now. Well, and it also won the 2016 Pullitzer Price for Fiction.

The story is told from the perspective of a captain in the South Vietnamese Army, an intelligence officer who has in fact been spying for the Vietkong for years. Being evacuated from Saigon during the chaotic last weeks of the Republic of Vietnam, the young captain finds himself in the Vietnamese exile community in Los Angeles. He stays part of the entourage of his old general, who is planning to start an insurgency in the now communist Vietnam. In order to protect his cover as a communist spy, the young captain gets implicated in the murder of two exile Vietnamese suspected to be Vietcong sympathizers, acts as a consultant on an American movie on the Vietnam war, and ultimately participates in an ill-fated military incursion into Vietnam which (somehow ironically) brings him into a communist re-education camp.

Nguen does a really great job of describing his various historical settings, be it the chaos of Saigon in April 1975 or the Asian community in Los Angeles. The major reason to like the book, however, is its central theme: alienation and ironic distance.The young army captain remains continuously aware of his mixed Vietnamese- French descent, which already makes him an outsider in his own country. He maintains a detached attitude during his time in the United States, continuously observing his environment with profound sarcasm, but without getting absorbed or integrated into it. The non-committal affair he begins with an American-Japanese university clerk nicely exemplifies this, as do the two murders the young army captain, who had never killed somebody during the war, gets involved in. The entire story is told with a dark sense of humor, which nicely plays together with the setting of war, espionage and murder.

Random movie association:
Obviously something related to Apocalypse Now...

Favorite quotes:
"In short, I was in a familiar place, the place of feeling unfamiliar, which I responded to in my usual fashion by arming myself with a gin and tonic."

"And let's get one thing straight, playboy. If we get involved, and that's a big if, there are no strings attached. You do not fall in love with me and I do not fall in love with you"

Favorite music reference:
Bang bang, je ne l'oublierai pas (the French version of Nancy Sinatra's song). Sung by the general's daughter at a show for the Vietnamese exile community in Los Angeles.

This is the End

Robert Harris: Dictator


Part 3 of Robert Harris' trilogy on the life of Roman statesman Cicero. It follows Imperium and Conspirata. Once more an awesome read. Definitely if one has studied Latin for five years and is into nerdy ancient Rome staff, but also for everybody else...

The novel starts off with Cicero in exile, with his old enemy Clodius having been elected tribune with the help of Julius Caesar. We then see, among others, Cicero return to Rome, his alignment with Pompeius in the civil war against Caesar, Caesar's reign as dictator and assassination, and Cicero's increasing opposition against Marc Anthony and support for Caesar's adopted son, Octavian. Ultimately, Cicero is being killed after Marc Anthony and Octavian (temporarily) settle their differences. At Marc Anthony's bequest, Cicero's hands and head were displayed on the rostra (the platform for public speeches) on the forum romanum.

The book is every bit as thrilling as its predecessors. It offers great insights into the end of the Roman Republic. What is especially interesting is to follow the increasingly violent politics and populism of the late republic, all against the background of still existing republican political institutions. In that regard, ancient Rome may offer interesting insights to better understand nowadays contested/ semi-democratic regimes, such as Iraq or Afghanistan. The character of Cicero os also nicely captured as a classic politician thrust into increasingly militarized power politics. Finally, the book offers some nice insights on Cicero's philosophical work during his late years. I am not too familiar with his philosophy, but the way Harris describes it, it seems it had a lot of stoic elements. 

Overall, another magnificent read and a great piece of historical fiction. Harris likened it to a "West-Wing-on-the-Tiber",  the perfect description... Perhaps not entirely en par with Robert Graves' I Claudius, but the target audience is also a bit different. Robert Harris has constantly managed to convince over the last decade, be it An Officer and a Spy or Pompeii. 

Random movie association:
Frank Drebin and the Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar...

Favorite quote: 
"A room without books is like a body without a soul."