Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay: Neapolitan Novels, Book Three [Paperback]

Part of the bestselling saga about childhood friends following different paths by one of the great novelists of our time (The New York Times).

In the third book in theNew York Timesbestselling Neapolitan quartet that inspired the HBO seriesMy Brilliant Friend, Elena and Lila have grown into womanhood. 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 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 for women during the 1970s. And yet, they are still very much bound to each other in a book that shows off Ferrantes strong storytelling ability and will leave readers eager for the final volume of the series (Library Journal).

One of modern fictions richest portraits of a friendship. NPR

Praise for Elena Ferrante and the Neapolitan Novels

“A large, captivating, amiably peopled bildungsroman.”—James Wood, The New Yorker

“One of modern fiction’s richest portraits of a friendship.”—John Powers, NPR’s Fresh Air

“Elena Ferrante is one of the great novelists of our time.”—Roxana Robinson, The New York Times Book Review

“Compelling, visceral and immediate…The Neapolitan novels are a tour de force.”—Jennifer Gilmore,The Los Angeles Times

“It took my brea