Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

Summary

Key takeaways

1. 1.

   The cost of escape is not paid once at the moment of leaving — Elena keeps paying it throughout her marriage, her writing career, and every encounter with Lila.

2. 2.

   Lila's intelligence doesn't protect her; without institutional scaffolding it becomes a kind of torment, turned on her surroundings and on herself.

3. 3.

   Ferrante treats the political — labor strikes, feminist organizing, leftist violence — not as color but as the actual material forcing characters to choose who they are.

4. 4.

   Female friendship here is rivalry, tenderness, and mutual need so entangled that separating them seems to be the real work of the series.

5. 5.

   The novel captures how marriages can feel like escape from one trap and then reveal themselves as another, slowly and without a single dramatic rupture.

6. 6.

   Motherhood appears as both genuine love and a constraint that reshapes every ambition around it — not sentimentalized in either direction.

7. 7.

   Naples as a place keeps its pull not because it's good but because it formed these women, and formation is not a thing you can un-do by moving away.

8. 8.

   Authenticity is the book's central problem: Elena suspects her achievements are performances; Lila suspects her suffering is wasted. Neither gets a clean answer.

Discussion questions

Use these on your own, with a book club, or as chat starters in Superbook.

1. 1.

   Elena describes her writing career as partially fraudulent — that she's performing an educated woman rather than being one. Do you think the novel endorses that self-assessment, or is it showing us a narrator who is too hard on herself?

2. 2.

   Lila's factory work and political radicalization in this volume represent the path Elena didn't take. Does Ferrante present Lila's choice as more authentic, or just differently trapped?

3. 3.

   The Years of Lead — leftist terrorism, political violence — sit in the background of this book. How does Ferrante use that historical moment without letting it become the story?

4. 4.

   Elena's marriage to Pietro deteriorates mostly through accumulation of small indignities and incompatibilities. At what point, if any, do you think she should have recognized what it was?

5. 5.

   Ferrante is unusually explicit about the female body — pregnancy, factory injuries, physical exhaustion. What does that specificity do that more abstract treatment of these themes couldn't?

6. 6.

   Is the Lila-Elena relationship a friendship, a rivalry, a co-dependency, or something the word 'friendship' doesn't quite cover?

7. 7.

   Lila's son Gennaro and Elena's daughters are minor characters but their presence shapes every major decision. How does Ferrante handle parenthood differently than most literary fiction about women?

8. 8.

   Elena moves in feminist intellectual circles but often acts against feminist principles she's endorsed. Is this hypocrisy, or is Ferrante making a different point?

9. 9.

   By this volume the neighborhood has a specific moral weight — it's both origin and trap. How does place function differently here than in novels where characters simply move on and don't look back?

10. 10.

    Lila seems to be physically deteriorating, coming apart at the margins. Do you read this literally, metaphorically, or both?

11. 11.

    Which character in this novel do you think is making the better life — and does the novel agree with you?

12. 12.

    The title refers to a permanent division in the neighborhood. By the end of this book, has Elena actually left? Has anyone?

Themes

Frequently asked questions

• Do I need to read the first two books before this one?

  Yes. The emotional impact depends almost entirely on what you already know about Elena and Lila. Starting here would mean arriving at a party three hours in — you'd understand the surface but not the weight of anything.

• Is Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay the best in the Neapolitan series?

  Many readers think so, or rate it just behind the fourth volume. It's the most politically rich and the least willing to let Elena off the hook. The earlier books are more propulsive; this one is more morally demanding.

• What is the book actually about, without spoilers?

  Two childhood friends in their late twenties navigating diverging lives — one who escaped their Naples neighborhood through marriage and education, one who stayed and is now fighting for basic workers' rights. It's about what escape costs and what staying costs.

• Is Elena Ferrante a pseudonym? Does it matter?

  Yes, Ferrante writes under a pseudonym and has consistently refused identification. It matters to some readers as a question of attribution; for the books themselves, the anonymity seems intentional and arguably adds to the work's unsettling quality.

• Who shouldn't read this?

  Readers who want plot-driven fiction with clear resolution. The Neapolitan books are slow-accumulation character studies where individual scenes rarely resolve cleanly. If that frustrated you in the first two volumes, this won't correct it.

About Elena Ferrante

Elena Ferrante is the pseudonym of an Italian novelist whose identity has never been publicly confirmed. Her Neapolitan quartet — My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child — sold millions of copies worldwide and is widely considered among the defining literary works of the early twenty-first century. She has also published The Days of Abandonment and Troubling Love. Her work is notable for its unflinching treatment of female interiority, class, and the violence embedded in ordinary life.