Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, the first of the Neapolitan novels, Elena Ferrantes fame as one of our most compelling, insightful, and stylish contemporary authors has grown enormously. She has gained admirers among authors — Jhumpa Lahiri, Elizabeth Strout, Claire Messud, to name a few — and critics — James Wood, John Freeman, Eugenia Williamson, for example. But her most resounding success has undoubtedly been with readers, who have discovered in Ferrante a writer who speaks with great power and beauty of the mysteries of belonging, human relationships, love, family, and friendship.

In this third Neapolitan novel, Elena and Lila, the two girls whom readers first met in My Brilliant Friend, have become women. Lila married at sixteen and has a young son; she has left her husband and the comforts her marriage brought and now works as a common laborer. Elena has left the neighborhood, earned her college degree, and published a successful novel, all of which has opened the doors to a world of learned interlocutors and richly furnished salons. Both women have attempted are pushing against the walls of a prison that would have seen them living a life of misery, ignorance and submission. They are afloat on the great sea of opportunities that opened up during the nineteen-seventies. Yet they are still very much bound to each other by a strong, unbreakable bond.

“[Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels] dont merely offer a teeming vision of working-class Naples, with its cobblers and professors, communists and mobbed-up businessmen, womanizing poets and downtrodden wives; they present one of modern fictions richest portraits of a friendship.”—John Powers, Fresh Air, NPR

“Elena Ferrantes THE STORY OF A NEW NAME, book two in her Naples series. Two words. Read it.”—Ann Hood, author of The Obituary Writer

“No one has a voice quite like Ferrante's. Her gritty, ruthlessly frank novels roar off the page with a barbed fury, like an attack that is also a defense…Imagine if Jane Austen got angry and you'll have some idea of how explosive these works are.”—John Freeman

“Ferrantes freshness has nothing to do with fashion…it is imbued with the most haunting music of all, the echoes of literary history.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Everyone should read anything with Ferrantes name on it.” —The Boston Globe

“Ferrantes novels are intensely, violently personal, and because of this they seem to dangle bristling key chains of confession before the unsuspecting reader.” —James Wood, The New Yorker

“One of the more nuanced portraits of feminine friendship in recent memory.” —Megan OGrady, Vogue

“Amazing! My Brilliant Friend took my breath away. If I were president of the world I would make everyone read this book. It is so honest and right and opens up heart to so much. Reading Ferrante reminded me of that child-like excitement when you cant look up from the page, when your eyes seem to be popping from your head, when you think: I didnt know books could do this!” —Elizabeth Strout, author of Olive Kitteridge

“Elena Ferrante will blow you away.” —Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones

“Ferrantes emotional and carnal candor are so potent." —Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“I like the Italian writer, Elena Ferrante, a lot. I've been reading all her work and all about her.” — John Waters, actor and director

“"Elena Ferrante tackles girlhood and friendship with amazing force.”— Gwenyth Paltrow

“Elena Ferrante may be the best contemporary novelist youve never heard of”— The Economist

“[Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels] dont merely offer a teeming vision of working-class Naples, with its cobblers and professors, communists and mobbed-up businessmen, womanizing poets and downtrodden wives; they present one of modern fictions richest portraits of a friendship.” —John Powers, Fresh Air, NPR

“Ferrantes freshness has nothing to do with fashion…it is imbued with the most haunting music of all, the echoes of literary history.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Elena Ferrantes THE STORY OF A NEW NAME, book two in her Naples series. Two words. Read it.” —Ann Hood, author of The Obituary Writer

“Ferrante writes with a ferocious, intimate urgency.” —Susanna Sonnenberg, author of Her Last Death: A Memoir

“The Days of Abandonment is a powerful, heartrending novel.” —Jhumpa Lahiri, author of The Lowlands

“I am such a fan of Ferrantes work, and have been for quite a while.” —Jennifer Gilmore, author of The Mothers

“No one has a voice quite like Ferrante's. Her gritty, ruthlessly frank novels roar off the page with a barbed fury, like an attack that is also a defense…Imagine if Jane Austen got angry and you'll have some idea of how explosive these works are.” —John Freeman, The Australian

“The womens fraught relationship and shifting fortunes are the life forces of the poignant book” — Publishers Weekly

"An engrossing, wildly original contemporary epic about the demonic power of human (and particularly female) creativity checked by the forces of history and society." — The Los Angeles Review of Books

Part of the bestselling saga about childhood friends following different paths by "one of the great novelists of our time" (The New York Times).

In the third book in the New York Times-bestselling Neapolitan quartet that inspired the HBO series My Brilliant Friend, Elena and Lila have grown into womanhood. Lila married at sixteen and has a young son; she has left her husband and the comforts her marriage brought and now works as a common laborer. Elena has left the neighborhood, earned her college degree, and published a successful novel, all of which has opened the doors to a world of learned interlocutors and richly furnished salons. Both women are pushing against the walls of a prison that would have seen them living a life of misery, ignorance, and submission. They are afloat on the great sea of opportunities that opened up for women during the 1970s. And yet, they are still very much bound to each other in a book that "shows off Ferrante's strong storytelling ability and will leave readers eager for the final volume of the series" (Library Journal).

"One of modern fiction's richest portraits of a friendship." --NPR