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status update: depressed.
Sep. 26th, 2021 03:10 amguess who finished all 4 neapolitan novels? me. it was me.
I thought I was going to rank book 1 as the best book for shallower reasons, but I think having read book 2, 3 and 4, it was the one I enjoyed the most and the one that stuck with me more than the others. arbitrary ranking: 1, 3, 2, 4. I skimmed and skipped the last 100 pages of book 4. though had it ended at tina, at that brilliant chapter, it probably would've been the best book.
if you haven't already [unlikely, given the crowd] omg, go read them!!!
anyway these are just. v messy, v shallow thoughts.
before reading these books, which I picked up because I vaguely remembered wanting to read them and I had an eight hour flight, I was explaining to lin what I want from girls in novels, and particularly about girls and their relationships to other girls. that yes, I wanted them to be consumed by each other, I wanted them to be the most important person to each other, I wanted them to love each other - be in love with each other - it's the same to me, but I did not want them to be romantic. damn bitch I should've just read my brilliant friend and been sated. WELL NOW. now I'm sated. this genuinely was the book for me. TO ME. it's like Holy Fuck Holy Fuuuuck. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. it just has everything. wretched girls. MEAN TERRIBLE WRETCHED GIRLS. ugly girls. the toxic female friendship, the contradictory shallowness and deepness of the female friendship. the way it's just. how do I even explain it? The Girl Best Friendism.
the two high points of this book:
(1) thrilling moment no.1: elena the moment before lina takes her vows, thinks about how she wishes to run away with her and leave all the men behind and have it only be lina and lenu. which me recounting it is deriving it of all it's romance, but IN THE READING.
(2) thrilling moment no.2: elena wanting to take lina as a man would just before her wedding, so she can ruin lina before lena is ruined by her husband. LIKE. LIKE>>> on the first eve of seeing her naked also. this moment actually goes crazy it goes insane and YES I do like my repressed homosexuality attempting to express itself using heterosexual notions because I don't know it just slaps. [can't explain myself] LISTEN.
(3) bonus thrilling moment no.3: the title drop moment.
the other reason this stands out as the best book, I feel like you need to read the other books to understand. the potential of children. in this book, and this book only, you feel like the story of elena and lina could go anywhere. that anything could happen to them, that the book could dip into any genre, given the strokes of fate and the whim of the characters. this book, in retrospect made me understand why heroes who save the world in their respective genres, are always so young. why the stories of ya can only exist within the confines of ya with only young adult characters. you really just can't have a 30 year old woman be spirited away into the magical realm of faerie or so, and expect similar results. that character really does have to be a kid.
I also loved how it was elena who was blonde and pretty and curvy, and lina was skinny and brunnette and sharp-edged, that lina had it worse and was better (...) I think my only grapple is that later on, lina gets beautiful but like, it was vaguely plot relevant......
nino somehow solidifies himself as a main character [negative] however lina is basically confirmed asexual lesbian or something. or just a lesbian. whatever. WHAT MATTERS is that actually elena-nino-lina is basically my tennis middle school mating rituals thesis but like worse. the POINT is that nino plays the same role for elena that lina plays HOWEVER with nino it's much easier to attribute the emotion to Love the way it cannot with lina. and ALSO the reason lina gets involved with nino is because elena loves nino. also of note, the way men fall in love with lina is by realizing all the traits that elena had loved and noted and known about lina since they were children. none of that love then, ever feels truly like love, just a hollow insincere echo, and you're left knowing that the one person who would have loved lina correctly and done by her correctly, and seen and loved her truly, is the only one who is not allowed to play the role of suitor.
thrilling moment: okay this is kind of weird, but ALSO, in a vacuum, when elena sees her kid[F] and lina's kid[M] going through infant sexuality together or whatever, and she thinks that she[F] and lina[F] would've never been allowed to do so. I DON'T KNOW. it's just the way she always makes these connections like why would she think that even.
thrilling moment: I think it's this book, might be book 4, but when they go to the professor's house and lina is coveted and adored and upstages elena, and elena spends the whole time stewing in rage and misery because lina does what she always has to her. and then they leave, and lina starts RAGING at the professor for her treatment of elena and what happened at the house and horrible it was and how she was a huge bitch. sorry it's the mixture of how everyone else in the world would prefer lina to elena, but lina will always prefer lenu to the world. the twisted psyche of how lina upstages elena and outdoes her at every turn because it's Elena she wants to impress, that it's elena who she wants to show that she can keep up, and she can do it all as well, and it's just.... YOU KNOWWWW
thrilling moment: elena thinking alfonso is more and more beautiful BECAUSE he looks more and more like lina.
thrilling moment: elena finally wins when tina disappears. and that's why the cycle breaks and why linalenu won't be any longer, why the dynamic and it's balance is shattered forever. except elena doesn't win because she has her daughter and lina doesn't, elena wins because the moment tina disappears, lina is holding imma.
I barely paid attention to this book after tina, it was pointless almost...well that and it leaned so heavily into politics and people who were not lina. I DON'T KNOW. something something about how when elena returned, not to naples, but to the apartment above lina in naples, was when everything fell back into place. sorry for not having thoughts it's just (...) every book is this exercise of how time without lina is a blur and merges together into a long montage of nothingness and misery, but time with lina is sharp and clear in every moment and feeling, and elena is miserable maybe, but it's in this lina-inflicted misery she revels in. liiiike.
my biggest hot take about these books is that it did not matter *who* elena was, not as a person nor how she ended up nor what her personality was, anyone could've been in the spot that elena was, and lina would have the same terrible hold and same terrible effect on them.
in saying so, the fact that it was elena made some parts so goddamn unbearable but for that same unbearability, made the whole book so goddamn good. I think because elena so deeply undervalues herself in regard to lina, therefore is unable to comprehend that lina might like her or think highly of her, and instead takes everything lina does as a negative, is SOOOOOOO. like you, the reader reading through lina's words, her actions, and then seeing it side by side to elena's narration. in a lot of books, it's either that the narrator is so undistinct, that everything that's written in their voice is the objective of the situation, or the narration is written so everything seems objective and the author can't ever seem to make it clear that it isn't. these books do such a brilliant job of making it clear to the reader that These are Elena's Thoughts, this is how Elena sees this, this is how She recounts this... and it's clever because it never reminds you in the middle of her thoughts, but only when she's recollecting facts or reminiscing about how she viewed something then, versus now. it's never that she says she interpreted lina's actions like this, but that her interpretation of lina's actions are written as the truth and the objective fact, but you the reader, have read those same actions, and know to question it.
also. everyone in their life calling lina 'lila' and only elena calls her 'lina' and the similarity of lina>elena, lina>lenu...
as a last note. I just loved how this truly captured the progression of how someone changes from how they were as a child to how they are as a teen and how they are as a young adult, an adult... that elena was so recognizable yet so different, that you could read something she does later in her life and think of how she would've reacted so differently as a child. that all the same, lina grew older, but still stayed almost exact to how she was as a child, only more jaded to the world. and how that was perfect to each respective character, because lenu will always change herself to be more liked, and lina will change the world to like it more.
these books were just so good.
in the end, I feel like all of linalenu is encompassed by this, something within the first 100 pages, and the biggest failure of their relationship is that this understanding is never reached again.
I thought I was going to rank book 1 as the best book for shallower reasons, but I think having read book 2, 3 and 4, it was the one I enjoyed the most and the one that stuck with me more than the others. arbitrary ranking: 1, 3, 2, 4. I skimmed and skipped the last 100 pages of book 4. though had it ended at tina, at that brilliant chapter, it probably would've been the best book.
if you haven't already [unlikely, given the crowd] omg, go read them!!!
anyway these are just. v messy, v shallow thoughts.
overall thoughts
damn these books are crazy. damn. daaaaaaaaaaaamn. I was thinking of telling my parents what I was reading, and then I thought, well I think there's value in reading the 'trivialities' of a woman's life, the daily, the mundane of their story. I think what I loved about it is that Lina is always promised and presented as this magical, mystical story, and even when she is dragged through the mud, and her life simple and boring as any other person's, it isn't. it's in her existence, or the reverence of it, or more specifically, the reverence that elena has of her, that she exists so unlike any and every other woman. the craziest books about some random woman's daily life you'll ever read.before reading these books, which I picked up because I vaguely remembered wanting to read them and I had an eight hour flight, I was explaining to lin what I want from girls in novels, and particularly about girls and their relationships to other girls. that yes, I wanted them to be consumed by each other, I wanted them to be the most important person to each other, I wanted them to love each other - be in love with each other - it's the same to me, but I did not want them to be romantic. damn bitch I should've just read my brilliant friend and been sated. WELL NOW. now I'm sated. this genuinely was the book for me. TO ME. it's like Holy Fuck Holy Fuuuuck. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. it just has everything. wretched girls. MEAN TERRIBLE WRETCHED GIRLS. ugly girls. the toxic female friendship, the contradictory shallowness and deepness of the female friendship. the way it's just. how do I even explain it? The Girl Best Friendism.
my brilliant friend
I think I liked this best for the reasons that anyone in my demographic would like this the best. the girls who like girls ism of this book is far more potent than any of the books that follow. because well it's repressed later on, and also, elena doesn't think she hates lina yet and also doesn't hate lina yet.the two high points of this book:
(1) thrilling moment no.1: elena the moment before lina takes her vows, thinks about how she wishes to run away with her and leave all the men behind and have it only be lina and lenu. which me recounting it is deriving it of all it's romance, but IN THE READING.
(2) thrilling moment no.2: elena wanting to take lina as a man would just before her wedding, so she can ruin lina before lena is ruined by her husband. LIKE. LIKE>>> on the first eve of seeing her naked also. this moment actually goes crazy it goes insane and YES I do like my repressed homosexuality attempting to express itself using heterosexual notions because I don't know it just slaps. [can't explain myself] LISTEN.
(3) bonus thrilling moment no.3: the title drop moment.
the other reason this stands out as the best book, I feel like you need to read the other books to understand. the potential of children. in this book, and this book only, you feel like the story of elena and lina could go anywhere. that anything could happen to them, that the book could dip into any genre, given the strokes of fate and the whim of the characters. this book, in retrospect made me understand why heroes who save the world in their respective genres, are always so young. why the stories of ya can only exist within the confines of ya with only young adult characters. you really just can't have a 30 year old woman be spirited away into the magical realm of faerie or so, and expect similar results. that character really does have to be a kid.
I also loved how it was elena who was blonde and pretty and curvy, and lina was skinny and brunnette and sharp-edged, that lina had it worse and was better (...) I think my only grapple is that later on, lina gets beautiful but like, it was vaguely plot relevant......
the story of a new name
this book is delicious because it begins the fun exercise of spotting when lenu speaks of lina's partners, how she means it's herself that is being mistreated. the highlight is this passage where she shares lina's vacation house bed for the first time of the whole stay, and she thinks of how lina spends every night cheating on stefano by sleeping with nino, stefano whom she abandoned and betrayed, stefano, who's side of the bed elena is laying on. BPBGPERIHDFJKLGVPAHBKJSNLDGLV HASKDNXV\. RIGHT????? RIGHT?!?!??!?!?!! the passage is much more delicious in the text but oh my god.nino somehow solidifies himself as a main character [negative] however lina is basically confirmed asexual lesbian or something. or just a lesbian. whatever. WHAT MATTERS is that actually elena-nino-lina is basically my tennis middle school mating rituals thesis but like worse. the POINT is that nino plays the same role for elena that lina plays HOWEVER with nino it's much easier to attribute the emotion to Love the way it cannot with lina. and ALSO the reason lina gets involved with nino is because elena loves nino. also of note, the way men fall in love with lina is by realizing all the traits that elena had loved and noted and known about lina since they were children. none of that love then, ever feels truly like love, just a hollow insincere echo, and you're left knowing that the one person who would have loved lina correctly and done by her correctly, and seen and loved her truly, is the only one who is not allowed to play the role of suitor.
those who leave and those who stay
I ranked this as number 2? on my ranking list. I'm not sure why. rethinking about it. it's probably 1, 2, 4, 3. BUT ALSO. I think the reason I loved it was because finally the satisfaction of elena being to revel in love. yes it's with nino yes sure it's not ideal but sometimes we are girls who enjoy romance. I think what feels very good about the romance, is that all the flaws of nino as a teenager that elena narrated but did not acknowledge, are no longer present, and instead he feels like a worthier partner for her, and it makes you feel good. reading like 'oh he really truly is a better man' [LOL]. I don't even know. I do think that this was one of the easier books to slog through of the series because of the romance. it was like, the mediocre payoff to all the build-up. like there was a better option [LINA MAKING IT CLEAR TO ELENA ABOUT WHAT ELENA MEANS TO HER], but like Alright. I'll Take It.thrilling moment: okay this is kind of weird, but ALSO, in a vacuum, when elena sees her kid[F] and lina's kid[M] going through infant sexuality together or whatever, and she thinks that she[F] and lina[F] would've never been allowed to do so. I DON'T KNOW. it's just the way she always makes these connections like why would she think that even.
thrilling moment: I think it's this book, might be book 4, but when they go to the professor's house and lina is coveted and adored and upstages elena, and elena spends the whole time stewing in rage and misery because lina does what she always has to her. and then they leave, and lina starts RAGING at the professor for her treatment of elena and what happened at the house and horrible it was and how she was a huge bitch. sorry it's the mixture of how everyone else in the world would prefer lina to elena, but lina will always prefer lenu to the world. the twisted psyche of how lina upstages elena and outdoes her at every turn because it's Elena she wants to impress, that it's elena who she wants to show that she can keep up, and she can do it all as well, and it's just.... YOU KNOWWWW
the story of the lost child
there's a line that elena's daughter says to her: "all you care about is your work and aunt lina" and that's ITTTT. it's because it's TRUE. also elena's work=lina, a thesis I will not explain and feel like I do not have to, something something about her work being the only space she has that is not lina's, that is not shareable with lina. something something. something. something that she only pursues BECAUSE of lina. I don't know. like I said, this book had it ended at TINA would've been the best book. there's this almost montage, of how lina and elena are pregnant at the same time, and have their daughters a month apart and it just. how did I explain it to lin. they make every relationship they have, regardless of whether it is their own DAUGHTERS, about their own relationship. it's just fucking crazy you guys SUCK. something about how imma and tina were going to be lina and elena all over again except they weren't because the cycle broke. IDK.thrilling moment: elena thinking alfonso is more and more beautiful BECAUSE he looks more and more like lina.
thrilling moment: elena finally wins when tina disappears. and that's why the cycle breaks and why linalenu won't be any longer, why the dynamic and it's balance is shattered forever. except elena doesn't win because she has her daughter and lina doesn't, elena wins because the moment tina disappears, lina is holding imma.
I barely paid attention to this book after tina, it was pointless almost...well that and it leaned so heavily into politics and people who were not lina. I DON'T KNOW. something something about how when elena returned, not to naples, but to the apartment above lina in naples, was when everything fell back into place. sorry for not having thoughts it's just (...) every book is this exercise of how time without lina is a blur and merges together into a long montage of nothingness and misery, but time with lina is sharp and clear in every moment and feeling, and elena is miserable maybe, but it's in this lina-inflicted misery she revels in. liiiike.
final thoughts
these books were so crazy and so good. like the parts that were good were soooo good and the parts that were boring and heterosexual were still very readable because it's 10000% like...No matter how you think about it, this is all LINA'S FAULT.my biggest hot take about these books is that it did not matter *who* elena was, not as a person nor how she ended up nor what her personality was, anyone could've been in the spot that elena was, and lina would have the same terrible hold and same terrible effect on them.
in saying so, the fact that it was elena made some parts so goddamn unbearable but for that same unbearability, made the whole book so goddamn good. I think because elena so deeply undervalues herself in regard to lina, therefore is unable to comprehend that lina might like her or think highly of her, and instead takes everything lina does as a negative, is SOOOOOOO. like you, the reader reading through lina's words, her actions, and then seeing it side by side to elena's narration. in a lot of books, it's either that the narrator is so undistinct, that everything that's written in their voice is the objective of the situation, or the narration is written so everything seems objective and the author can't ever seem to make it clear that it isn't. these books do such a brilliant job of making it clear to the reader that These are Elena's Thoughts, this is how Elena sees this, this is how She recounts this... and it's clever because it never reminds you in the middle of her thoughts, but only when she's recollecting facts or reminiscing about how she viewed something then, versus now. it's never that she says she interpreted lina's actions like this, but that her interpretation of lina's actions are written as the truth and the objective fact, but you the reader, have read those same actions, and know to question it.
also. everyone in their life calling lina 'lila' and only elena calls her 'lina' and the similarity of lina>elena, lina>lenu...
as a last note. I just loved how this truly captured the progression of how someone changes from how they were as a child to how they are as a teen and how they are as a young adult, an adult... that elena was so recognizable yet so different, that you could read something she does later in her life and think of how she would've reacted so differently as a child. that all the same, lina grew older, but still stayed almost exact to how she was as a child, only more jaded to the world. and how that was perfect to each respective character, because lenu will always change herself to be more liked, and lina will change the world to like it more.
these books were just so good.
in the end, I feel like all of linalenu is encompassed by this, something within the first 100 pages, and the biggest failure of their relationship is that this understanding is never reached again.
"Was it possible? She had taken me with her hoping that as a punishment my parents would not send me to middle school? Or had she brought me back in such a hurry so that I would avoid that punishment? Or—I wonder today—did she want at different moments both things?"
