The Story of a New Name

The texts Elena and Lila write and collaborate on, whether intentionally or unintentionally, are an important symbol of the women’s influence on each other. The Blue Fairy is the childish novel Lila wrote while Elena studied for the middle school exam. Although Maestra Oliviero privately marked Lila’s text with the epithet “beautiful,” she withheld her praise and thus discouraged Lila from pursuing a formal education (454). Elena gets queasy reading the book, feeling that Lila’s “childish pages were the secret heart of my book […] anyone who wanted to know what had given it warmth and what the origin was of the strong but invisible thread that joined the sentences would have had to go back to that child’s packet, ten notebook pages” (454). When she resolves to return the treasure to Lila, along with sharing the news of her own book’s publication, Lila responds by burning the book as soon as she thinks Elena’s back is turned—either as a means of purifying herself from the past, or of expressing resentment that Elena has somehow stolen her own destiny as a writer.

The Story of a New Name begins with Elena’s analysis of the notebooks Lila gave her in 1966–things she wanted to keep away from her suspicious husband.