Thank you Lynda and Anda for your responses to my review. One of the great things about Ferrante is how passionately readers debate her work. The feminist awakening I refer to here is Lenù’s growing awareness of the aims of second wave feminism, which included the ability of women to have careers and live independently from bread-winning husbands. Ferrante captures this beautifully in Lenù’s struggle to become a writer and to free herself from an unhappy marriage. Lenù’s friendship with Lila is undoubtedly fraught. It is ‘worthy of note’ because it remains the central relationship in her life, fraught or not. That Lenù is compelled to write this tribute to their friendship indicates that she gets far more from it than Lynda suggests. By comparison, the men in her life are brief distractions. Also, there is actually very little vying for male attention. Lenù suffers silently while her best friend seduces the man she loves, but it is a strength of the work that Ferrante doesn’t shy away from the painful aspects of friendship.
I’m not sure how much the allure of the ‘ethnic other’ plays into the success of these books. These people are bitterly poor and Ferrante does not romanticise their lives. These novels would be remarkable wherever they were set.

I beg to differ with Luke. There is not a whiff of 'feminist awakening' anywhere in 1700 pages. The alternative to 'life beyond marriage and motherhood' turns out to be the mere extension of women vying for male attention, and the analysis of associated anxieties and mistrust ( characterised by the blinding absence of female soldarity in any shape or form.) In English this would be known as a 'fair-weather' friendship, and probably remain unworthy of note. Stories about females (including the ubiquitous inclusion of a token trans) can hardly be touted as necessarily feminist anything. The more you suds it, the more soap comes out of these tomes.
There is something about the whole washing flapping-above-dark-southern-vicoli that charms Anglo readers fixated on the ethnic Other. The problem remains for those who actually have to haul in the smalls before the pigeon shit gets to them.
Last- and this may well slink in under radar- the specifically local nature of delinquent thugs is a worthy take home portrait, mercifully absent any tedious overstatement.