Review: The Neapolitan Quartet

New Years Resolution finished up right on time! I finally finished Elena Ferrante's 4-part series, and here are my thoughts!

The first time that I tried out Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, a series of four books released from 2011 to 2015 chronicling the life of two best friends in Naples, I thought it was a snooze fest. I don’t know if that’s a testament to changing tastes in literature or to the subjective nature of “good books”, considering My Brilliant Friend was named the #1 book of the 21st century by the New York Times. I figured maybe the New York Times loves boring books?

It took me over a year before I had the heart to try again. Too many of my favorite influencers whose opinions I trust and tastes I find similar to my own, were vouching for it. Right book, wrong time?

I gave it another shot, and wouldn’t say that I was hook-line-and-sinker for it, but I felt like the stage was set. I was invested in little Lina and Lenu, and I found myself curious about the thread of tension that reveals itself by the end of Book #1. A slow start, and yet the final two books were so engrossing that I finished both 400+ page books within the span of 8 days.

Perhaps it’s because I’m Italian, because I take my female friendships very seriously, or because I identify with a misunderstood writer character (go figure!). Lenu and Lina are two young girls growing up in the slums of Naples in the 1940s and 50s, their neighborhood haunted by local politics, rival gangs, and intermittent violence. The two girls are the smartest in their class and are constantly pit against one another– sometimes intentionally, sometimes not– in a world where girls are optionally educated and rarely taken seriously. These books take place across the landscape of Italy’s political and ideological revolution, a time marked by socialism, class disputes, and political corruption. Lina and Lenu are sometimes best friends so close that they are almost telepathic in their understanding of one another, and other times the resentment and disdain between them bares its teeth.

Lina– spit-fiery, blunt, ingenious and layered. Lenu– determined, introspective, thoughtful and increasingly tormented.

In this series, you’re watching these two grow from little girls with dreams of writing novels into women with histories thick with ambiguity, mystery, and fury. Affairs, deaths, disappearances, violence, political tensions, addictions, gang rivalries, miscarriages, abuses– all of this lives within the pages of the Neapolitan Quartet, where Elena Ferrante spins your face-value version of these characters on their head every other chapter.

What I appreciate about these books is that my feelings about the characters grew and changed not only as the book went on, but almost every few chapters. I spent the entire second book wanting to fist fight Lina, only to find by the third book that Lenu was making me stand on my couch and scream “BITCH STAND UP!” I felt so much bitterness towards Lenu’s mom, but after she cares for her in her old age and her vulnerability stars to reveal itself, I felt for her. I was frustrated with Stefano and then sad for him. I was upset for the sake of Antonio, and then I didn’t care if he got hit by a bus.

I think true shock came in when my feelings about the characters changed to the point that, by the end of Book #4, I was able to identify the real villain of the story.

NINO.

The women are fascinating characters, don’t get me wrong. The fourth book had me so captivated that I canceled plans on two different occasions to find out what was happening. The PLOT TWISTS.

But the way that Elena Ferrante captured the character of Nino, makes you fall in love with him as Lenu does, and then slowly reveals him to you in the way that infatuation tends to do– piece by piece until he becomes a character that you don’t recognize as the person you originally had such affection for– was mesmerizing. By the time that I lost my own romanticism for Nino and realized the redemption arc for Lenu and Nino was always destined to be short-lived, I had already forgiven Lina for her cruelty towards Lenu in earlier chapters. It was clear that Nino held the specific type of magical intrigue reserved for men presenting as intelligent, thoughtful, and emotional: that is, men that turn out to be horrible to women in the name of abstract things– love, art, beauty, genius. Both Lina and Lenu were the accessories, for a time, that made Nino’s life interesting from a new angle, and then they were discarded. Nino doesn’t see people outside of the narrow perspective of himself, and you can watch from a distance as the novels carry on how that keeps him from the depths of his life. And eventually, from the depths of Lenu’s.

The question is, of course, what do we think happened to Tina, and then, ultimately, to Lina? Was Tina taken by the Solaras? Was it a case of mistaken identity when they meant to take Imma? Is she alive? And Lina? Is she still alive, or did she sink herself to the bottom of the sea in grief? Did she restart, give herself the life that she wasn’t permitted in all of her years before? Who sent the dolls, and what do they mean?

My initial thought is a pessimistic one. I don’t know how people ever get over the loss of a child, and judging by the way that Lila got lost in her grief and never found her way out, my assumption was that she finally gave up. All the talk of ending herself. The end of her marriage, all the money that meant nothing, the books half-researched and half-written. She was clearly a tormented woman by the end of her life. It could be argued that there wasn’t much to stay alive for.

But also, the cleared out closet. The dolls. The money she had acquired, the lack of ties to her former life, the betrayal from Lenu in her last book’s success. There’s enough speculation that leaves doubt.

I, for one, think that the Solaras did have something to do with Tina’s disappearance. Jury is still out on whether they believed that she was Imma. The truth was that the Solaras also hated Lila, blamed her for what Lenu was capable of in some sense. Everyone saw Lina as all-powerful, and her daughter was similarly headstrong. Everyone knew Tina, and after all, no one ever tried to right that wrong afterwards. I think that Lina’s resentments and attempts to live out her dreams through an uncooperative Lenu were centralized on this one, life-altering event. If she could pivot the pain and blame from off of herself and onto Lenu, like everything else, she would be free from it in some sense.

And of course, because Lina and Lenu are so inescapably tied, she never really could be free of it.

Did that kill her? I’m not sure.

But the fact that I fully believe that there’s an answer to this question speaks to the talent in Elena Ferrante’s writing (or rather, the anonymous writer’s writing. Elena Ferrante is a pen name, for those you who might not have known, like I didn’t for a long time!)

My Brilliant Friend was, ultimately, my least favorite of the four. Even that, is a compliment. My favorite, by far, is The Story of the Lost Child (Book #4). The writing felt different to me in a lot of ways, and I was completely unable to put it down. A slow start with an incredibly strong finish, I’m going to be thinking about these for a long, long time.