Siden boka ennå ikke er utgitt i norsk utgave, har jeg funnet frem til en engelsk omtale: Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, the first of the Neapolitan novels, Elena Ferrante’s 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.
For meg tok det litt tid å komme inn i Ferrantes univers, selv om jeg likte også den første bok godt. Jeg likte bok nummer to veldig godt, denne tredje lever ikke helt opp til mine forventninger. Liker den godt altså, men ikke sånn at hvert ledige øyeblikk måtte brukes til å komme videre i boka. Handlingen beskriver hvordan Elena strever med å etablere et stabilt familieliv langt unna Napoli og hvordan hennes familie og venner forholder seg til at hun synes å velge dem bort.
En sterk firer på terningen fra meg for denne!
