The Story of a New Name
This didn’t really feel like a new book so much as the next sentence after the final words of the first. It just rolled on.
Opening, as the first, with a great mystery, it makes me hungry for the end of this saga. We get glimpses into futures of these people and then spend all our time in much earlier periods, slowly following them into their futures.
Some meta-text starts to emerge here I think. I know the author is anonymous, and given the fidelity of the writing you have to wonder “how much of this was a faithful account of her life?”. She seems to play with that, by having one of her protagonists wrestle with the same question.
It creates this dizzying sense of blurring boundaries. What is Lena Greco, what is Lena Ferrante. Even as Lena worries about what of her is actually Lenu. At some point, who cares?
I think rather than wonder about what of these fictional characters might be real, I like the possibility that it makes it easier to consider these fictional characters as real. I choose to believe these people existed and I’m following their lives.
This book uses all sorts of arts to make that plausible.
Before "The Story of a New Name" I read: My Brilliant Friend
After "The Story of a New Name" I read: Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century