Unbecoming is a novel featuring a possibly unreliable and rather unlikeable narrator named Grace. The story alternates between 24-year-old Grace in present-day Paris and Grace several years ago in Garland, Tennessee, where she grew up. A crime has been committed and a couple of Grace’s friends have gone to jail. What responsibility does Grace have for what happened? What is it that Grace really wants? It seems that Grace has always wanted something else, something other than what life has given her, and she has […]
A Feminist Fairy Tale
I recently saw a review of this novel on NPR’s web site which compared it to Beauty and the Beast. Frankly, I don’t see it, but that’s okay because it’s so much better than a retelling of any known fairy tale. Novik combines elements of Slavic fairy tales, magic, and even some Tolkienesque flourishes (she admits to being a fan and it comes through in the work) to create a complex story about powerful women and friendship, the merits and difficulties of collaboration, and finding […]
Feminism, Communism and Friendship
First, I’m thrilled to report that this third installment in the Neapolitan Novels series is not the last! The fourth is due later this year, and it’s a good thing because this novel, like the previous, like every good soap opera, leaves us hanging. How have these stories not been turned into a televised series? In book three, Ferrante takes us further into the loves and lives of Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo. Friends since childhood in working class Naples, they have become somewhat estranged […]
A Soap Opera Worthy of Tolstoy Continues
In the second novel of her trilogy, Ferrante continues the story of Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo, two Neapolitan girls born in 1944 Italy into poor families in a working class neighborhood. When we left them in My Brilliant Friend, 16-year-old Lila had married the prosperous grocer Stefano, the son of the “ogre” Don Achille. Elena, no match for her friend in looks but a successful and hardworking student, feels that her world is falling apart. Her best friend, with whom she expected to work […]