In the very first chapter of The Story of a New Name, Elena skips ahead a few years before returning to the chronological order. In the leap forward in time, Elena is describing a time when she is distanced from the neighbourhood and her relationship with Lila she sees as being “terrible”, but polite (page 15, The Story of a New Name). Lila has given Lenù journals that she has written about her life the past few years, and the neighbourhood. Another major time the chronology has been disrupted is in the first novel when Elena writes of Lila telling her about the dissolving borders the first time it happened on new years eve 1958, which she does not tell Lenù about until 1980.

Both times, Elena is recounting finding out some inner secrets and confidence of Lila’s. Except for these breaks in chronology, the novels are told exclusively from from Lenù perspective at the time, never revealing future events, so these breaks are very significant. Yet they are never fast forwards to Lenù’s life, they are always about Lila. They reveal very little about the situation or life Lenù is living in that time, sticking with the method throughout the books of only describing her feelings at that certain time, and never disclosing what she knows will happen in the future until it actually does happen.