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Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (L'amica geniale #3)

by Elena Ferrante, Ann Goldstein (Translator)

4.3 · Rating Details · 23,059 Ratings · 1,998 Reviews

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. ...more

Paperback, 418 pages

Published September 2nd 2014 by Europa Editions (first published 2013)

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Community Reviews

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Aug 10, 2015 Diane rated it it was amazing

Shelves: italy, modern-fiction, women

This book left me speechless.

I've spent the last few weeks reading Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, and I have grown increasingly attached to her two main characters, Elena and Lila. These women are so well-drawn and seem so real that I was anxious about what will happen to them. When I finished this book last night — on the edge of my seat, by the way, because there was yet another dramatic ending — I was so unsteady that I had to rest a moment, pondering the fates of the women.

I refuse to spoil a ...more

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Oct 04, 2016 Violet wells rated it really liked it

I finished this today, the day Elena Ferrante’s identity has reportedly been revealed. I confess I feel a bit guilty now because while reading this there were several times I found myself wishing I knew how much was fiction and how much autobiography. I wondered this because it struck me that when Lila disappears from the pages so too does the electric charge Ferrante’s writing has. Ferrante writes well about Elena’s initiation into university life, the Milan literati, Italian political unrest, I finished this today, the day Elena Ferrante’s identity has reportedly been revealed. I confess I feel a bit guilty now because while reading this there were several times I found myself wishing I knew how much was fiction and how much autobiography. I wondered this because it struck me that when Lila disappears from the pages so too does the electric charge Ferrante’s writing has. Ferrante writes well about Elena’s initiation into university life, the Milan literati, Italian political unrest, about marriage, child rearing, and infidelity but not markedly better than lots of other writers. The best parts of this book were when Lila returned. For me, no Lila, no party. And Lila is absent for a lot of this book. So I couldn’t help wondering if Lila, Ferrante’s muse, is a real person. Did she luck out as an author in having such a compelling brilliant friend or is she an inspired invention of Ferrante’s? It doesn’t really matter but I was curious.

If this disreputable journalist/culture - yet another indictment of how misplaced and trivial investigative journalism has become. How about spending your time and energy on uncovering secrets of corruption and conspiracy in governments and multi-national corporations, guys, instead of harassing a writer? - is right then it turns out these Neapolitan novels are even more a triumph of imagination than perhaps they would have been perceived were they a literary transcription of Ferrante’s personal experience. Because we discover Ferrante, though born in Naples, moved to Rome when three and had a German mother who fled to Italy to escape the Holocaust. It always struck me that the descriptions of Naples were quite generic – could have been Bari or Palermo or Reggio Calabria or even Rome minus an occasional ocean. The same is true in this book of Pisa and Florence where Elena finds herself. I never really felt she was in Pisa or Florence. She could have been in any Italian university town. The settings were perhaps Ferrante's way of concealing her tracks.

Ferrante was always going to have a problem keeping her anonymity because of the apparent intense realism of her work - you can't help wondering how much is true while reading her. The irony for me is that these books were never about Naples, or at least specific to Naples. In fact it doesn’t surprise me at all that she never lived in Naples for long. And yet it’s the depiction of Naples that has caused a lot of the fuss. They are about the difficulties women face to achieve autonomy and identity in any milieu where men still often have the final word – as such they could be set in Bagdad or Birmingham, Rome or Nairobi. It’s interesting that in Italy many have claimed her books were written by a man and even now there’s talk they were written by this translator’s husband. Would even that matter? It says a lot about Italy which, though I’d argue is not generally misogynistic, does tend to be chauvinistic – the disparagement of women more an intellectual insecurity than an emotional distaste). Were her books written by a man it’d certainly be a phenomenal achievement because Ferrante, whoever she is, will probably go down in history as one of the very best exponents of unravelling the inner lives of women.

So, yep this was really good too, though not quite as good as Book Two. Interestingly and for the first time Elena isn't always likeable in this book - often you feel because the wise and inspirational influence of Lina is not at hand. And it ends on a real cliffhanger and I’m annoyed I didn’t already buy the forth book cos now I have to wait for it to arrive.

I only hope Ferrante doesn’t stop writing now that her privacy has been so crudely invaded.
...more

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Violet wells Emma wrote: "I wonder if her choice to use her non de plume's first name for the character fuelled the fire of biographical curiosity; it suggests a s ...more
Oct 07, 2016 02:25AM

Violet wells Rae wrote: "Violet wrote: "Rae wrote: "Wonderful review, Violet. I found it quite sad about the reveal. Of her work I definitely like the Neapolitan n ...more
updated Oct 07, 2016 02:40AM

Mar 09, 2016 Maxwell rated it really liked it

Shelves: i-own-it, 2016

4.5 stars Review to come. But obviously it was great.
---
Ok, now that I've had time to come up with some thoughts--though, no promises that they will be coherent--I can attempt to write a review of this one. Like the 2 preceding novels in the Neapolitan novels series by the fabulous Elena Ferrante, this one is quite hard to rate on its own. The stories are so dependent on one another, and Ferrante so excellently doles out information that your reading of 1 book in the series seriously affects you ...more

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Aug 10, 2015 Julie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, italy-theme-setting, read-2015, best-of-2015

”Each of us narrates our life as it suits us.” ~Lila Cerullo

Mount Vesuvius simmers on the edges of Naples, a dragon in slumber, a metaphor for the rumbling, teeming city that erupts in violence without warning. The view of the volcano's hulking presence, seen through the windows of an upscale apartment, serves as proof that one has risen above the squalor of “the neighborhood” to arrive in the loftier heights. But no amount of money or education can sand away the rough resentments of those raise ...more

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Aug 20, 2016 Perry rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Series described as, inter alia, Passionate, Vicious, Intimate, Sweeping, Challenging, Flummoxing, Ferocious, High Stakes, Subversive and Blisteringly Good on Bad Sex
If you've not started reading them, WHY NOT?

Neapolitan actress Valeria Golino [Hot, Hot, Hot]

The 3d of the "Neapolitan Novels" tetralogy by Italian novelist Elena Ferrante (a pseudonym). Ms. Ferrante says she considers the four volumes to constitute one novel. Instead of giving an overall description of the books again, I'll just ...more

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Apr 03, 2015 Teresa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

From the beginning, the reading of Ferrante has been a visceral experience. Yet, reading her standalone novels first did not prepare for me for what a hyperrealistic fever dream these Neapolitan Novels have been. Unlike hyperrealistic works of visual art where what is underneath proves that the picture is not real, what is underneath here seems all too real. Upon finishing this installment I even felt guilty, as if I were complicit in the character's decisions.

The narrator's scholarly work on ma ...more

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Apr 28, 2015 Margitte rated it really liked it

Political turmoil rages through the Italian landscape when Elena finally gets married to her professor, Pietro Airota, and Lila has settled down living with Enzo. Their worlds are a million miles apart as far as the two different lifestyles they have chosen is concerned.

It doesn't take long for Elena to realize, what Lila could have told her anyway:

Marriage by now seemed to me an institution that, contrary to what one might think, stripped coitus of all humanity."

Years pass in which they do no ...more

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Jan 19, 2014 Francesca Marciano rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Reading Elena Ferrante's trilogy has been a marathon of never ending awe. I'm still electrified from reading the last volume. Lila and lena will stay with me for a very very long time. Pleease read "My Brilliant Friend" trilogy and keep in mind that it gets better and better and better and better as you turn each page.

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Aug 24, 2016 Elyse rated it it was amazing

Elena is married, living in Florence with a husband she fights with often.
They have two daughters.....making her life even more complicated. Choices need to be made. Will she leave....or will she stay? And regardless of her choice--what else has to happen? For her? Her children? Husband? Is being happy with yourself dependent on if you stay OR leave?
Basically- Elena is not content as a Betty Crocker type domestic-woman.
She spends a great amount of time evaluating her every move, her every thou ...more

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Jun 01, 2016 Melanie rated it it was amazing

"Ferrante’s singularity is to make a glory of introspection and turn it into theatre. There’s a dark ardour present in her writing, and a thrilling physicality to her metaphors, boldly translated by Ann Goldstein. She speaks of “the anxious pleasure of violence”, of desire feeling “like a drop of rain in a spiderweb”. Her charting of the rivalries and sheer inscrutability of female friendship is raw. This is high-stakes, subversive literature."
Catherine Taylor for The Telegraph

A theatre of intro ...more

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Oct 27, 2015 Emily rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: lives-of-girls-and-women, italy, literary-fiction

I NEVER WANT TO READ ABOUT NINO AGAIN

-------

Okay, I've calmed down enough to write a review (more like a "review") so that I can move on to the next book. This installment was the most frustrating one to read thus far. It feels disjointed and the entire middle of the book is sloooooow. It's hard to tell if this is an artistic choice - does the reader have to experience the same sort of ennui that Elena does as a new mother? if so, are hundreds of pages appropriate? - or if the story simply drags I NEVER WANT TO READ ABOUT NINO AGAIN

-------

Okay, I've calmed down enough to write a review (more like a "review") so that I can move on to the next book. This installment was the most frustrating one to read thus far. It feels disjointed and the entire middle of the book is sloooooow. It's hard to tell if this is an artistic choice - does the reader have to experience the same sort of ennui that Elena does as a new mother? if so, are hundreds of pages appropriate? - or if the story simply drags out this period of Elena's life for too long.

My main problem is that this book is not about Lila and Elena. This book is about Nino Sarratore. Nominally, this book is about the two women that we've been following for three books now. Lila goes to work in terrible conditions in a sausage factory; Elena marries a Nice Boy from a slightly higher social class than her own and has a child; the two intersect, memorably, only a few times over the course of their twenties and thirties. But Nino keeps dipping in and out of their lives, whether he's showing up at Elena's book reading, appearing offscreen as the baby daddy of a fellow activist, or becoming friends with Elena's husband through work. Nino's appearances propel the action forward and give Elena new purposes and meaning. By the end, (view spoiler).

There are a few elements that I really loved. As Lila and Elena enter the real world outside of the neighborhood, Elena discovers feminism and Lila becomes a working-class hero, exposing the dangers of the factory she works in. There are shifting relationships between Elena and her family, especially when (view spoiler). Politics and the changing cultural landscape of Italy pervade the background, and sometimes the foreground:

And at least Enzo in front of him, in the factory, women worn out by the work, by humiliations, by domestic obligations no less than Lila was. Yet now they were both angry because of the conditions she worked in; they couldn’t tolerate it. You had to hide everything from men. They preferred not to know, they preferred to pretend that what happened at the hands of the boss miraculously didn’t happen to the women important to them and that—this was the idea they had grown up with—they had to protect her even at the risk of being killed. In the face of that silence Lila got even angrier. “Fuck off,” she said, “you and the working class.”

Ferrante's blinding talent is writing truthfully (even as Lila rails against the very idea of doing things "truthfully"), and there are certain sentences and turns of phrase in this book that made me start fervently taking notes, highlighting, thinking about them again and again, turning them over in my head. Ideas in Ferrante's hands feel fresh and revolutionary and new, and that's why I keep coming back to these books. (I loved her Paris Review interview.) Once her characters are in a situation and have to live with the consequences, she's able to turn her insightful prose to and narrow her focus on that particular problem. It's getting from Situation A to Situation B that seems to be more difficult for her in this book.

So much of this book is based on the soap opera of Nino and who he's currently interested in sleeping with. The relationships never make sense to me. (view spoiler) The seesaw between Lila and Elena feels cheap, a too-obvious manifestation of the give and take friendship between them (as Lila says, "We made a pact when we were children: I'm the wicked one"). The ending is explosive only because something actually happens after pages and pages of nothing. I really hope that the next book can engage with the heavy questions that Ferrante obviously wants to without getting bogged back down in a soap opera. ...more

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Jul 15, 2015 Kelly rated it really liked it

Shelves: favorites, fiction, the-continent, owned, 20th-century-postwar-to-late, examined-lives, its-the-quiet-ones, shes-quite-an-original-my-dear, coming-soon-to-a-blog-near-you

Originally published on my blog, ShouldaCouldaWoulda Books.

Hello and welcome back to the third edition of Kelly Freaks Out Over Elena Ferrante Theater!

I hope that you didn’t come in here with the expectation that this was going to be the time that I got disillusioned with Elena, did you? Because that seems unlikely to happen. Ever. At least not with these Neapolitan novels. These things are like crack brownie ice cream pot (insert more adjectives that indicate addiction and deliciousness here) s ...more

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Nov 14, 2016 orsodimondo rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: italiana

SEI PROPRIO UNA BRAVA RAGAZZA, POVERA TE
Due nomi, belli come Elena e Raffaella, storpiati in Lenù e Lina, o Lila.
Due donne, belle, intelligenti, sensibili, con almeno una marcia in più, rivoltate come calzini, esplorate nei loro sentimenti più ingarbugliati e molesti, scandagliate, scarnificate, messe a nudo negli aspetti peggiori, al punto che la mia mediocrità si sente meno sola, e a volte, perfino, superiore.

Scavare nelle parole e tra le parole, in quello che ci gonfia e rompe, nel lato osc ...more

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Dec 30, 2015 Teresa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: e5, n-italia

Oh, Elena! Como conheces tão bem o ser humano!

Li em nove dias as cerca de novecentas e cinquenta páginas dos três primeiros livros das Crónicas Napolitanas. E, agora, lamento-me por não conseguir ler em inglês, ou italiano, para ir desencantar, em qualquer lado, o volume final das vidas de Lila e Lenù...
Estes três livros merecem a melhor review que eu poderia ser capaz de fazer, no entanto, sinto-me sem as palavras que lhes façam justiça. Talvez no final consiga...
Por agora, deixo-lhe um Sol (r ...more

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Sep 29, 2016 Robin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, audio-book, 2016, translation

4.25 stars

Part three of the Neapolitan series. It's a continuation of the ever fascinating lives of the girls from the neighbourhood, Lila and Lenu. Their evolution and their friendship, still complex, is still compelling.

While reading this, I had some thoughts:

1) Amid all the fighting and drama (of which there is a never-ending supply), NO ONE seems to be having good sex!
2) Lila is so unlikeable, about 99.9% of the time. I have a hard time understanding why Lenu hangs onto her. Some of the thin ...more

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Oct 04, 2016 Ana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: c-italy

Dizia para comigo que a maturidade consistia em aceitar o rumo que a vida tomara sem nos agitarmos muito, traçar um sulco entre a rotina diária e aquisições teóricas, aprendermos a olhar para nós, a conhecermo-nos, enquanto esperamos por grandes mudanças."

Comparativamente com os dois livros anteriores, esta História de Quem Vai e de Quem Fica retira um pouco o foco das protagonistas, direccionando-o para as tensões sociais e políticas de uma Itália agora em plena década de 1970 – o fervilh ...more

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Dec 14, 2016 Carmo rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Também eu fui contagiada pela ferrantefever, e neste momento a única terapêutica é saber como isto vai acabar.
Nestes dias de leitura e em conversas a propósito da mesma, tenho tido alguma dificuldade em explicar o tema dos livros. É que, se para o primeiro volume é aceitável dizer que é a história da amizade entre duas raparigas e da vida no bairro onde vivem, nos seguintes a narrativa vai ganhar densidade a nível pessoal das personagens, assim como aprofundar temas com raízes bem reais e mostr ...more

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Dec 29, 2015 Jennifer D. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: effing-awesome, in-translation, 2015-books

YOU GUYS!!! i am currently having major angst. i somehow managed to totally miss the fact that there will be a 4th book in this series.... and that it does not come out until september, 2015. (i stay away from reviews until i have had a chance to read a book (books) for myself.) so while this series was all over my radar, i did not know too much about the books at all. so now... i have to wait to find out where this is all going. i am really at loose ends here. and a little twitchy.

anyway... my YOU GUYS!!! i am currently having major angst. i somehow managed to totally miss the fact that there will be a 4th book in this series.... and that it does not come out until september, 2015. (i stay away from reviews until i have had a chance to read a book (books) for myself.) so while this series was all over my radar, i did not know too much about the books at all. so now... i have to wait to find out where this is all going. i am really at loose ends here. and a little twitchy.

anyway... my suffering aside...

elena ferrante is so good at what she does. everything is so strong and evocative. this book is set during a tumultuous time in italy's history, and she brings it to life so well. there is so much aggressiveness going on in the story: the political unrest and opposing factions, the carabinieri, the personal lives of the characters which seem, sadly, so full of abuse and despair. it's all so intense, loud and combative. it would be easy for these elements to be overdone and annoy the reader, but ferrante handles it all so well. i would say that someone is going to have an excellent thesis on feminism in the 'my brilliant friend' series. the feminism theme seems to get even stronger in this third book. one of the ideas i enjoyed, later in the3rd story, occurs when elena recognizes she has endured two relationships that were based upon male power. elena develops a theory, and begins an essay about the ways that men have depicted women in literature, from the bible through flaubert.

the examination of female friendship is very raw and honest - the state of relations between lila and elena are always in flux. in her recollections, elena presents us with the gamut of their friendship and doesn't shy away from uglier truths - that friends can experience hate, indifference, jealousy, disgust almost as easily as feeling fondness, love and respect towards a person who is a best friend. having ferrante bring this examination of female friendship to readers is a huge and necessary treat for the literary canon.

in a review, writer Mona Simpson said this of the series:

"...the Neapolitan novels are something else, an altogether different order of art. Sometimes this happens: a writer works steadily and diligently and then there is a leap into the extraordinary. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay has been eagerly anticipated as the concluding volume of what had been for a long time called a trilogy. But there are still decades to cover in the saga of two girls from an impoverished neighborhood who try to get out and to make it, by way of the classical if increasingly unlikely means of betterment through education. We must be grateful. When this viscerally populated epic is complete it will give us what readers want most from prose fiction: a full world."

so i will now wait for book #4. impatiently and anxiously. as with the previous books in this series, we are left with a cliffhanger. i may need a support group to get me through the next 8 months.
...more

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May 08, 2016 helen the bookowl rated it really liked it

This third book in The Neapolitan Novels was just as good as the other two. I think what is the most interesting about this series is to see how the two protagonists, Elena and Lila, grow up and develop from children to adults. In this book, it becomes clear that they develop in different ways and create a distance in their friendship, but still the tense dynamics between them was maintained.
I'm pretty eager to read the last book in this series and see how everything ends :)

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Nov 25, 2014 Claire Melanie rated it it was ok

This book was pretty readable and I'm curious to find out what happens to the characters after having read the two previous books in this series but there are literally no likeable characters at all. They're all such insufferable self obsessed arseholes who are hideous to each other and completely self involved. Really weird. I guess I'll read the last one cause this one certainly ended on a cliffhanger.

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Nov 04, 2016 Celeste Corrêa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: owned-books, itália, livros-lidos-2016

A escrita de Elena Ferrante é como um rio sem pontes, que me obriga a olhar para a corrente. Deixa ficar abismos nos quais os meus sentimentos se perdem e, inexplicavelmente , se reencontram.
5 ( cinco ) estrelas.

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Oct 29, 2014 Karen Bojar rated it it was amazing

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Elena Ferrante’s novels get better and better. To date three novels have been published in the series often referred to as the Neapolitan novels. The novels work on many levels: an exploration of the social and economic divisions in Italy; the extent to which class and gender constrain women’s lives, the difficulty of ever erasing the imprint of one’s background, the complexities of women’s’ friendships over time. This is the best book about female friendship I have read since Toni Morrison’s ...more

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Oct 26, 2015 Suzy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorite-series, favorite-authors, friendship, fictional-autobio, family-dynamics, journeying

What to say about this amazing book?!! I've been pondering this question for days as I absorb the intensity of my experience with this third in the Neopolitan Novels series. I want to emphasize the thought of "my experience" with this book, rather than say "after reading this book". As I said in my review of book two The Story of a New Name:

When reading these books, the world falls away and I am living with the characters . . .
. . .the true beauty of Ferrante's writing is how easy it is to lose ...more

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Oct 16, 2016 Elsa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Podia dizer tanta coisa acerca deste livro que nem sei por onde começar...
As reviravoltas constantes fizeram-me pensar em como na nossa vida é mesmo assim... achamos que as coisas são como são e mais tarde descobrimos que afinal se calhar não são... fazemos coisas que achamos que fazemos porque queremos e depois ironias do destino mostram-nos por A+B que não queríamos fazê-las... apaixonamo-nos ou acreditamos que sim até o destino nos mostrar que o amor é outra coisa...
Acredito piamente que ex ...more

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Jun 27, 2015 Ellie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, fiction, european, 2015indchallenge

I love Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, of which Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay is the third volume. This one is as wonderful as the first, My Brilliant Friend. I also loved the second volume, The Story of a New Name, but maybe a little less than the first, with the friends Lila and Elena (our narrator) as children and then teenagers. In The Story of a New Name, we follow Elena as she leaves the violent, impoverished neighborhood of her childhood, going to university and then becoming a p ...more

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Jun 01, 2016 TheSkepticalReader rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: in-print, translated

I quit.

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Dec 08, 2014 Stephen Durrant rated it really liked it

The third of Elena Ferrante's remarkable Neapolitan novels. Alas, even as I acknowledge her genius, I grow bit weary and ever so slightly critical. The complexity of the love-hate relationship between Lenu and Lila is the cause of my weariness--what is really going on here? Perhaps that is the point: the relationships that are the most important in our lives are never fully understood. Still, I am suffocating a bit after 1500 pages watching the rubix cube of their relationship turned into such a ...more

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Dec 23, 2014 Toto rated it it was ok

Writer Charles Finch says, "I read Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan trilogy this year. I read it twice, actually. It made me want to quit writing." This is because he says he realized that this is what truly naturalistic writing is and presumably he doesn't have what she has. He is envious of her psychologicaly inward style and admires her for not foregoring plot in the process. In that, she is, according to Finch, even better than Philip Roth.

Whoa. This kicks the latest Ferrante accolades up a sill ...more

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Mar 19, 2016 Diane Barnes rated it really liked it

This third novel in the series follows Lila and Elena into their 30's. They are both strong women in different ways (as all women are), both trying to find love, find themselves, make life better (as all women do).
They are bound by their love, and sometimes hatred and envy, for each other, wanting the best for their friend, but each afraid of being abandoned by the other. Once again, the end of the book leaves the reader wanting more.
This is an incredible series of books, building in intensity a ...more

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Jan 23, 2016 Josh rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2016

Oh Elena, you idiotic hypocritical nincompoop! Some characters you love to hate, some you hate to love. Lenuccia is one you don't feel sorry for nor just dislike, but merely loathe at the end of this book. As this soap opera filled tetralogy comes to a close with the next volume, I can say that I haven't read anything quite like this before and Ferrante is not just another hyped up author, but the real deal. Onto 'the finale' soon...

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Who is Elena Ferrante	4	12	Oct 08, 2016 05:15AM
SPOILER: If you had only one choice	4	91	May 19, 2015 08:06AM
The Rooster!: TOB15 title: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay	61	73	Mar 25, 2015 01:54PM
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About Elena Ferrante

Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist.

Ferrante is the author of a half dozen novels, including The Lost Daughter (originally published as La figlia oscura, 2006).

In 2012, Europa Editions began publication of English translations of Ferrante's "Neapolitan Novels", a series about two perceptive and intelligent girls from Naples who try to create lives for themselves within a violent and ...more

More about Elena Ferrante...

Other Books in the Series

L'amica geniale (4 books)

Books by Elena Ferrante

My Brilliant Friend (The Neapolitan Novels #1)

The Story of a New Name (The Neapolitan Novels #2)

The Story of the Lost Child (The Neapolitan Novels #4)

More…

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“Each of us narrates our life as it suits us.” — 40 likes

“Leave, instead. Get away for good, far from the life we’ve lived since birth. Settle in well-organized lands where everything really is possible. I had fled, in fact. Only to discover, in the decades to come, that I had been wrong, that it was a chain with larger and larger links: the neighborhood was connected to the city, the city to Italy, Italy to Europe, Europe to the whole planet. And this is how I see it today: it’s not the neighborhood that’s sick, it’s not Naples, it’s the entire earth, it’s the universe, or universes. And shrewdness means hiding and hiding from oneself the true state of things.” — 20 likes

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Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (L'amica geniale #3)

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Quotes from Those Who Leave a...