"The second book, following last year’s 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 cruel price that this passage exacts."

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
Series: The Neapolitan Novels #2
Genres: Fiction

Also by this author: My Brilliant Friend, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, The Story of the Lost Child, Troubling Love

 

This is the second book of The Neapolitan Novels written by Elena Ferrante which continues their story when Elena (Lenu) and Lila are in their twenties.

“For your whole life you love people and you never really know who they are.”

“Everything in the world was in precarious balance, pure risk, and those who didn’t agree to take the risk wasted away in a corner, without getting to know life. I understood suddenly why I hadn’t had Nino, why Lila had him. I wasn’t capable of entrusting myself to true feelings. I didn’t know how to be drawn beyond the limits. I didn’t possess that emotional power that had driven Lila to do all she could to enjoy that day and that night. I stayed behind, waiting. She, on the other hand, was passionate about them, played for all or nothing, and wasn’t afraid of contempt, mockery, spitting, beatings.”

“[…] it takes time for people to understand what’s good and what’s bad, and helping them means doing for them what in a particular moment of their life they aren’t capable of doing.”