The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante (Europa, 2012)

The second volume in this author’s Neapolitan quartet is written with the same drive and intelligence of the first, and is even more rewarding and engrossing, only because the lives of its two heroines, who are now young women, are that much more complex and crucial.

We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas (Simon and Schuster, 2014)

We Are Not Ourselves is the story of Eileen Leary, a second-generation Irish-American.  Both  her parents are alcoholics,and she grows up fast and smart in Queens in the 40s and 50s when she is forced to parent both her mother and father as well as herself.  She marries Edmund, a sweet unambitious academic who teaches and does (chemical) research at a public university in the Bronx.  (To Eileen’s chagrin, he turns down a job at NYU because he feels he is more needed in the Bronx.)  Eileen and Ed have a son, Connor, and move into and eventually buy a 3-family home in Jackson Heights.  Ed begins acting strangely and is finally diagnosed with having early onset Alzheimer’s, from which he dies several excrutitating years later.

This book is sincere and old-fashioned and Thomas is good at capturing the routines of daily life and the relationships between parents and children, and spouses.  The book is carefully — almost painstakingly — written and is vivid and engaging in its sensitive depiction of domestic life.  Yet it failed to make much of an impact on me, perhaps because Eileen is not a particularly compelling or sympathetic character, and the book never rises above her somewhat pedestrian level.  Its lack of effect might also be a result of its span and length: 50 years, 600 pages.  Neither the story nor the characters can sustain that much time and that many pages.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein (Europa, 2012)

The first of Ferrante’s trilogy (now a quartet) of novels set in Naples, My Brilliant Friend follows two  girls, best friends, from the age of about 5 to 16, as they grow up in poverty in a blasted neighborhood outside Naples.  Both girls are smart: one possesses an extraordinary innate brilliance, and the other, the narrator, works very hard to educated herself and benefits from the education that her parents reluctantly allow her to pursue.  Nothing extraordinary happens to these girls, but Ferrante’s careful and dramatic depiction of their everyday lives make this book engaging and interesting.  She observes their difficult lives with dignity and respect, and we see something heroic about these two young girls struggling against countless obstacles and misfortunes to become their brightest and best selves.

 The translation of Ferrante’s Italian by Ann Goldstein is fresh and clear.  One feels this book and its heroines add something signficant and unique to the literature of youth.

The Sun in Scorpio by Margery Sharp (Little, Brown and Company, 1965)

An odd, unsatisfying, and I think unsuccessful novel by this quirky writer whose other books I have enjoyed and admired.  This one begins on the “Island next door to Malta,” which is never named, where a faded and failed British couple are raising their three young children in a backwater outpost of the Empire in 1913.  The middle child, Cathy, is a difficult and rather charmless creature who loves the heat of the Mediterranean  sun.  The outbreak of the Great War forces the family to return to genteel poverty in a London suburb, and the novel follows Cathy through the next 30 years, through the end of World War II.  She spends her adult life working as a governess and companion to Elspeth and her mother Lady Jean, but remains oddly distant and mysterious to all who encounter her, including the reader.  The novel progresses in brief, shallow vignettes and moments that are written with a sometimes enchanting and sometimes baffling eccentricity.  It always feels as if it’s running on vapors, and peters out instead of ends. 

A curious book — a miss for both the writer and the reader, I’d say.

The Hothouse by the East River by Muriel Spark (Viking, 1973)

Another weird, dark, chilly, and elegant novel by Spark.

SPOILERS. Paul, born in Montenegro, meets Elsa at the secret compound somewhere in the English countryside where they are both doing intelligence work during WWII.  They work alongside some military men and several German POWs.  They marry, and after the war they move to New York City, to an apartment in a building that faces the East River (that in summer  has insufficient air conditioning and in winter unstoppable heat), have two children, Pierre and Katarina, and live a luxurious Upper East Side life.

One day Elsa, whose shadow always falls mysteriously towards rather away from the light, sees a clerk in a shoe store on Madison Avenue who she thinks is one of the former German POWs, who supposedly died in the war, even though he appears not to have aged.  Paul is convinced that the shoe clerk and the POW are the same man, and his reappearance spooks him and makes him paranoid.  Meanwhile, Garen, Elsa’s unorthodox analyst, moves into their apartment and acts as their butler so that he may study Elsa more closely.  Their friend Princess Xavier incubates silkworms beneath her voluminous breasts, and Pierre produces a version of Peter Pan with old people playing all the children’s roles.  Paul’s paranoia increases and Elsa’s shadow continues to fall in the wrong direction; he begins to claim that she “isn’t there” or is dead.  And in fact, at the very end of this short novel we realized that all the characters are not there, or dead: Paul and Elsa and the Princess and several of their colleagues (who have reappeared in NYC and joined their social circle) all died in a bomb attack in London during the blitz.  So the book represents some sort of after, or alternative, life: a ghost story.

Spark writes with her customary icy elegance and sly wit, but it’s hard to know what the meaning of this weird conceit is.  The book had no resonance (for me), and it left me feeling cheated and a little disappointed.

The Duke’s Children by Anthony Trollope

The Duke’s Children is the last of the six novels in Trollope’s Palliser series, and a satisfying conclusion to these wonderful books.  Shockingly, the beguiling Duchess of Ominium, Glencora, has died suddenly just before the book begins, and the reader misses her almost as much as the Duke.  He is left alone to oversee the sentimental education of his three children, and the book concentrates on the romances of his eldest son and heir, Silverbridge, and daughter, Mary (Gerald, a younger son, only figures tangentially).  Mary is in love with a decent yet untitled gentleman named Frank Treager, who lacks both wealth and rank, and the Duke refuses to approve their union.  Meanwhile, Silverbridge, recently elected to Parliment but still occupying himself with horses and hunting, proposes to the perfectly suitable Lady Mabel Grex, who plays hard to get, and so Silverbridge transfers his attention and affection to Isabel Boncassen, a beautiful, intelligent and vivacious American girl.  Lady Mabel realizes her mistake and tries to reclaim Silverbridge’s love.  Unfortunately, she is really in love with Frank Treager, but since neither of them have fortunes (Lady Mabel’s has been squandered by her noble yet degenerate father and brother) and both want lives of luxury, they are unable to marry each other.  The Duke embraces the suitable Mabel as the future Duchess and his daughter-in-law just as Silverbridge loses interest in her and begins courting Isabel, and the Duke must learn to extend his political liberalism into the personal sphere and embrace his children’s lovers, even though neither of them are aristocratic.  Helping him in this process is Mrs. Finn, the wonderful wife of the wonderful Phineas Finn (alas barely present here) whom the Duke estranges by his short-sightedness before (re)embracing.

Various subplots involving horse racing and hunting round out this narrative of two loves triumphing over societal prejudice, and Trollope’s sympathetic and lively portrayal of all the characters is very enjoyable.  Perhaps the most dynamic and interesting character is Lady Mabel Grex, a young woman in an impossible situation desperately trying to rescue herself from penury and spinsterhood.  Her manouvering through her risky and difficult attempts to land Silverbridge are thrilling and very poignant and show a sensitivity to the plight of woman that equals Edith Wharton’s.  She is a very memorable character, right up there with my beloved Phineas Finn.

Vertical and Horizontal by Lillian Ross (Simon and Schuster, 1963)

I finished this book over a month ago so of course now I remember very little about it, except that I enjoyed it very much and thought it was quite smart and amusing.  It’s about — at the best of my recollection — a group of loosly connected New Yorkers in the early 1960s, who are all seeing analysts (a very woodyallenesque setting now that I think about it).  At its center is a romance between a young neurotic man who happens to also be an analyst and a young Bohemian woman who works at a cafe in Greenwich Village, and some other people and relatives from their orbits.  As far as I know this is Ross’s only novel, which is a shame, because it is quite amusing and very adroitly written.

I read this at the suggestion of James Ivory, who mentioned that MerchantIvory had optioned it and tried to make a movie, but that Lillian Ross was impossible.  Perhaps this explains their interest in Tama Janowitz’s Slaves of New York, which is a very similar book in many ways, just set in a different era.

Innocence by Penelope Fitzgerald (Mariner Books, 1998)

Another brilliant and beguiling book of completely new tone and atmosphere, this  one taking place in post-war Italy (Florence).  The plot follows the unlikely courtship and marriage of Salvatore, a doctor from a poor southern family, and Chiara, a Florentine countess from a noble but impoverished family.  Their relationship is mostly hindered by their well-meaning but inept friends, family, and colleagues.  All of these idiosyncratic characters are brightly and brilliantly portrayed, as is the world of post-war Italy.  Fitzgerald’s uncanny ability to get every detail from large to small, exactly right, and to create flawed and complex and unusual characters who are nevertheless entirely believable is masterful, and this book is stunning.  How does she do it?  Even the dog is perfectly alive.

For the record, the characters that surround and interfere with the clueless but oddly competent Chiara and the bull-headed Salvatore are her father, the gracious and ineffectual Count, her eccentric Aunt Maddalena, her brisk and bossy English school friend Barney, and her stoic and reclusive cousin Ceasare.  Salvatore’s main ally is his colleague Gentilini, whose friendship and tact he returns with rudeness and disdain.  A wonderful gallery of characters.

Bartelby the Scrivner and Benito Cereno by Herman Melville

I enjoyed both these novellas, although the oddness and ambiguity of Bartleby made a deeper impression on me.  It seemed to me to be a perfect and very poignant depiction of the debililtating effects of depression, which were chillingly and perfectly captured by Bartelby’s mantra:  “I would prefer not to.”  Exactly.  Benito Cereno was interesting for its complicated and complicating moral universe, which skews the reader’s sympathies in alarming ways.