Lila's disastrous marriage to Stefano collapses under an affair with Nino, the boy both women have loved since childhood, while Elena buries herself in her studies and a engagement of her own, each woman's escape from the neighborhood costing her something the other envies.
Books mentioned in The Story of a New Name (2)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: “I looked for Little Women, I found it.”
Complete Plays by Samuel Beckett: “...crushing them with one of the books that Professor Galiani had lent me, Complete Plays, by a writer named Samuel Beckett.”