To me, above all, the books in this series are about social class - about one's origin and purpose, about language and expressions, and mostly about the transformative power of education and the promise it holds.
The life story of a first-generation academic felt eerily close to some of my experiences.

These are big books, the German edition of this second volume is over 600 pages long. Ferrante's style and Karin Krieger's translation make the pages fly by as if it was nothing, an absolute pleasure to read. Like in the first novel of the series, I learned a lot about Naples and Italy, Neapolitan and Italian, and life in the 1960s. Everything is conveyed through an unforgettable narrator, teenaged Elena Greco.

Yes, there are many characters in this novel (and the others) and some of them go by a nickname or two, and I was very grateful for the comprehensive list in the beginning of the book. I should not have been surprised by the violence, both physical and psychological, in "The Story of a New Name".

Some big words and concepts in this review, but I know you can handle them, my fellow Elenas.