{"id":16042,"date":"2015-09-28T14:40:15","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T22:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/?p=16042"},"modified":"2015-09-28T14:40:15","modified_gmt":"2015-09-28T22:40:15","slug":"read-these-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/?p=16042","title":{"rendered":"Read these books"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Neapolitan Novels. <\/strong>Three of the \u00a0four novels have been published in English:\u00a0My Brilliant Friend<\/em>,\u00a0The Story of a New Name<\/em>, and, now,\u00a0Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay<\/em>. Taken together, the novels span some 50 years, chronicling the life-long friendship between Elena Greco and\u00a0Lila Cerullo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Girls\u2019 secret.. by\u00a0Mario Cattaneo<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A girl’s Neapolitan childhood and adolescence, in the late nineteen-fifties. The neighborhood is a book unto its own, a lively, dirty, poverty-stricken ghetto in Naples, a \u00a0chaotic, impoverished world where adults grease the palms of\u00a0the Camorra aka The Solara Brothers, and where irons and furniture and children fly out of windows during domestic disputes, and where even mild-mannered fathers \u00a0routinely beat their children and their wives. The city of Elena\u2019s childhood is a poor, violent place, with the snatched richness that comes from deprivation (i.e. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn ); a holiday at the sea; novels from the library; the encouragement of a teacher; a best friend who is a demon of creativity and intellect; the unnerving and beautiful elements of human relationships;\u00a0a wedding, the promise of getting your article published in a local journal, a conversation with a boy whose intellect is deeper and more liberal than your own. Ordinary-seeming occurrences take on a special \u00a0luminosity against a background of poverty, ignorance, violence, and parental threat, a world in which a character can be casually described as \u201cstruggling to speak in Italian\u201d (because mostly people in this book are using Neapolitan vernacular). \u00a0I was entirely caught up in this story, as it evoked those familiar yet almost indescribable feelings about long friendships, adolescence, and home. You\u2019re inextricably tied to a person, a place, but you hate how strong the connection is, how it drags you back in when you try to escape it; slowly it tears you apart.<\/p>\n


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The Neapolitan Novels. Three of the \u00a0four novels have been published in English:\u00a0My Brilliant Friend,\u00a0The Story of a New Name, and, now,\u00a0Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. Taken together, the novels span some 50 years, chronicling the life-long friendship … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16042"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16093,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16042\/revisions\/16093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}