The Story of a New Name - Book Review

In The Story of a New Name, we continue to follow the story of Lenu and Lila, the two childhood friends from My Brilliant Friend. 

 

Time passed for them, not a lot, but enough to widen the abyss between these two friends even further.

Growing Up Hurts

In this book, we feel like Lenu’s life doesn’t just revolve around Lila anymore, but that makes her feel lost and inappropriate. 

This really caught my attention: she’s not the perfect hero we’re used to seeing or envisioning. In The Story of a New Name, we see a girl with an ever-growing sense of not belonging, which hurts her and almost hurts us, even though, rationally, this feeling was completely expected. 

Not Here, Nor There

Lenu no longer belongs to the misery and violence of her neighborhood, yet she’s still not a part of this new world she is now engulfed in. Her insecurities are glaring, and it almost hurts us readers who have been following each step of her journey to get here, knowing how hard she’s worked and how much she's put into this. 

She seems depressed, doubting whether all her effort was really worth it or if she will never get rid of the poverty and ignorance she grew up in. Could she really be another person just because she studied more than her friends? 

You Don't Always Recognize Your Victories

For the reader, she was a winner; she conquered everything she wanted, step by step. But for her, she’s not good enough for that, so she attributes everything she is, everything she got, to Lila, her childhood friend, who is, at the moment, stuck in a spiral of suffering that seems to worsen every day. Her dream life was, after all, a nightmare.

Elena Ferrante is an amazing writer and created the kind of story we just want to keep reading, non-stop, until the very last page.

I can't wait to start the third book of the series: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay.