Gaia Girace (Lila) and Margherita Mazzucco (Lenù), who have been remarkable so far, are 18 and 19, and they look it. She is quickly disillusioned by the marriage, and which further unravels when she meets again her childhood love, Nino Sarratore. Elena has had no contact with Lila for some time, but one night, Elena receives word that Lila is ill and goes to her right away in San Giovanni a Teduccio, where Lila now lives with her young son, Gennaro, and Enzo, Elena and Lila’s mutual childhood friend.

Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay (Paperback) - Waterstones Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay (Paperback) - Waterstones

While writing about the politics of literature, she has in fact mostly been focused on herself and her own comforts. People died of carelessness, of corruption, of abuse, and yet, in every round of voting, gave their enthusiastic approval to the politicians who made their life unbearable. What if you know something about a text because of something dark, bad, shameful, or unacceptable, that you know about yourself? The solitude of women’s minds is regrettable,” Elena says, reflecting sadly on her lifelong rivalry with Lila. Goldstein's elegant translation carries the novel forward toward an ending that will leave Ferrante’s growing cadre of followers wondering if this reported trilogy is destined to become a longer series.While they are dressed up to appear just a little older, with makeup and wigs, their obvious youth gives the effect of young women adrift in the world, and sometimes they look like children playing at adulthood. I was the only one talking, I remember: she was humming, she greeted people who didn’t respond, the rare times she interrupted me she uttered only exclamations, without any evident relation to what I was saying. Elena feels trapped in her role as wife and mother, and is jealous of Lila, who has achieved success of her own back in the neighborhood: She is head of computer operations at a factory and is free to live her life as she chooses.

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay Quotes - Goodreads Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay Quotes - Goodreads

Elena married, moved to Florence with her husband, started a family, and published several well-received novels. A young professor at the university, he believes his career and intellect are superior to his wife's, which she comes to resent. Refusals to engage in the productive, consensus-building arguments of criticism, refusals to consider the big picture, refusals to elevate ourselves beyond our petty complaints.A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact. The break in production because of the pandemic allowed this adaptation of Elena Ferrante's Those Who Leave And Those To Stay to feel even more authentic.

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay - Wikipedia

Part of what we love about the books is that they are about people—particularly the critic Lenù—coming to understandings of the world that they can’t put up for evaluation. Lila, after separating from her husband, is living with her young son in a new neighbourhood of Naples and working at a local factory. The knowledge, here, came from the accrued feeling of living for years in a world that finds a pastel aesthetic distasteful. Translated by Ann Goldstein, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay documents the beginning of middle age, wherein the two women grapple with success, marriage, motherhood, and the harsh realities of a rapidly changing world.And the men know this too, know that the shoes are of great significance, even as they speciously urge her to not be petty.