Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

When I returned to the third book of Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels after six months away, what struck me most, aside from how vividly the story's two main characters, Elena and Lila, remained in my mind, was the density of her storytelling. Not the language: her sentences are simple and short, her words utilitarian. The density is emotional: every paragraph is packed with love, hatred, fear, boredom, with hairpin turns of heart and mind. When before the novels reminded me of Dreiser, Cain, and Tolstoy, the third, as it opens out into the professional lives and politics of Italy in the '70s while remaining intensely personal, made me think most of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. I may take another six months before turning to the series' fourth and final novel, but I have no doubt I'll be thinking of Elena and Lila in the meantime.