I’m watching this late but am struck by the discussion of time, Naples and place. To me an element of the power of both Lying Life and the Neapolitan novels is their very specific sense of place, specific social structures of class and gender that characters absorb and use and push against. So many contemporary American novels just wander around a middle anywhere, depict or assume middle and upper middle class lives, in interchangeable small towns or big cities. Ferrante’s characters live in very specific places, times, and with societal class identities just like we readers do. That is what makes her stories and characters so complex and real, and easy to identify with in comparison to the less authentic character types moved around in technically complex plots in so many current American novels.
Elena Ferrante is the subject and expression of the Neapolitan nation. Only the outline is Italian. success is due only to that land and if it becomes universal, it is only thanks to the Neapolitan genius. A country like Italy from the Italian unity has always proved hostile towards the Neapolitan people. A unit of the country never wanted by the Neapolitans that was imposed with weapons and bayonets. We claim the role today of being a great capital, today relegated to the provincial capital abandoned to its destiny despised by an Italian rogue state.
