The Story of a New Name

Within this book, we continue to follow the story of Lenu and Lila. Time passed by them, not a lot, but enough to grow the abyss between these two friends even larger.

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 was something that 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 feeling of not belonging, that hurts her and almost hurts us, despite the fact that rationally this feeling was completely expected.

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 to. Her insecurities are glaring and it almost hurts us readers that have been following each one of her steps to get here, knowing that she’s doing her best and how much effort she put into this.

She seems depressed, doubting if 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?

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.

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