Questions About The Story of a New Name (Neapolitan Novels, #2)

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Answered Questions (22)

Team Lenu or Team Lila? Or do most people feel sympathetic towards both equally?

Amanda Can I be team anti-Nino? While we are discussing around the girls I think that our energy should be anti this unbearable and arrogant guy.
This novel …moreCan I be team anti-Nino? While we are discussing around the girls I think that our energy should be anti this unbearable and arrogant guy.
This novel is built around social, gender and class norms and discussing Lila and Lenù goes against the central ideas in the book. (less)

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Is it necessary to read the first book in this series in order to enjoy this book?

Tim Andrews I'd go so far as to say that the whole Neapolitan Quartet is one book.…moreI'd go so far as to say that the whole Neapolitan Quartet is one book.(less)

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In English, we recognize levels of discourse and acknowledge that academic speech and writing differ from everyday speech. But the book has numerous mentions about "levels of Italian," so many that I wonder if there are more levels in Italian than there are in English, if the levels are more marked, or if Italians place more importance on the sophistication of speech than do Americans. Bilinguals, please comment?

Erika Nowadays we (Italians) put less emphasis on the levels of language that you (English speaking people) do, or at least that has been my experience in b…moreNowadays we (Italians) put less emphasis on the levels of language that you (English speaking people) do, or at least that has been my experience in both the UK and the USA. Everyone (except maybe for the very old) can speak Italian correctly and fluently, and less and less people learn the regional dialect from their families. Fifty years ago, however, it was different: you spoke only dialect with your family and friends, and you learnt Italian when you started school, at six. Most of the children, then, stopped studying in primary or secondary school, and they went back to speaking dialect, and if they were from the lower classes, like Lila and Lenù, they never read anything in Italian ever again. What happened is that Lenù learnt a scholastic Italian at six, and she went on studying it much like anyone of us now would study a foreign language: it never sounds perfectly natural to native speaker. She only learnt the "spoken Italian" (non scholastic form, so to speak), when she went to the university and met people from the upper classes who spoke Italian from birth. So there are not really different levels of Italian, in these novels: there is dialect, and there is Italian, which only richer Italians could speak naturally, while the lower classes learnt it at school and never actually used it. (less)

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Is it worth continuing to the end? I am so exhausted by these two!

Ami If you don't FEEL that you MUST read the rest - then just drop it. Don't read it just for marking V.
(Although I admit that the story of the new name i…moreIf you don't FEEL that you MUST read the rest - then just drop it. Don't read it just for marking V.
(Although I admit that the story of the new name is the weakest of the four, and can be exhausting).(less)

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What is the meaning of the books name?