Slum, Naples, Italy, 1947 
 In reading the 'Neapolitan series' of Elena Ferrante, I am constantly reminded of the clear influence of 19th-century realism - description of ordinary or familiar events as they are, with digressions into political events or societal norms to fill in the background. But the ordinary or real does not mean the banal. 
 One could reasonably say that this is series of war novels. It speaks without bombast or pretensions, and describes, with precise and subtle prose, a war of attrition. This war is one of slow-burning family arguments with no real end even after long bouts of shouted insults, of the slow suffocation social roles telling you what you must and must not be. There is a code word spoken very early in the first volume which tipped me off to the later developments of the rest of the book, when the two girls talk about Little Women. But how would it be possible for one of them to be both a woman and a writer? 
 This volume, as all the others, deals with social aspirations and the cycle of poverty - how dare you want to be like them, to go to university, to write a book, do you think you're better than us? Elena's mother, with her crooked leg and frail body, is a driver for her to escape, a shambling phantom behind her, a symbol of the deformations of the past. 
 Each of the four volumes has an established theme: the development of resentment and friendship in childhood, the limitations of social boundaries, the compromises and confinements of marriage, and the establishment of regrets in old age. Of course these are not four discrete topics, but they build upon each other, as one's life builds upon experiences of the past. Little elements or details which might not seem like much in the beginning are the foundations of emotional triumphs and resentments. And of course the author is not so blunt as to just tell you such a thing happened, but to show individual reactions, facial expressions, choices in words, who talks to who and who avoids who. The implications are the thing. 
 I feel like I've said too much and too little already. I very seldom say this, but this is a series I will read again.