As Elena publishes her first novel and marries into a prestigious Milanese family, Lila works brutal factory hours in Naples and is drawn into the city's labor unrest — their friendship stretching across widening distances of class, ambition, and the turbulent politics of 1970s Italy.
Books mentioned in Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (5)
Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto: “"Now, instead, as in Ariosto's Orlando, in my head a fountain had opened and it flowed from my eyes without ever drying up..." — Elena's own narrative voice making a literary allusion.”
Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan: “...women are losing all restraint, one has only to read Elena Greco's indecent novel to understand it, a novel that is a cheap version of the already vulgar Bonjour Tristesse.”
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: “"And so I pushed on, in my speculations, from the first and second Biblical creations to Defoe-Flanders, Flaubert-Bovary, Tolstoy-Karenina..." — Elena's own narrative reflection on literary heroines.”
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert: “"And so I pushed on, in my speculations, from the first and second Biblical creations to Defoe-Flanders, Flaubert-Bovary, Tolstoy-Karenina..." — Elena's own narrative reflection on literary heroines.”
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: “"And so I pushed on, in my speculations, from the first and second Biblical creations to Defoe-Flanders, Flaubert-Bovary, Tolstoy-Karenina..." — Elena's own narrative reflection on literary heroines.”