My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is the story of two best friends - Elena and Lila - living in the slums of Naples, Italy during the 1950s. It is the first in a series of four books - The Neapolitan Novels. The girls both live in the same run-down area of Naples and the book begins when they are in 1st grade and continues until they are 16 years old. Lila is the strong-willed troublemaker and Elena is the studious and introspective follower.
Reader, be prepared! There is a Index of Characters at the beginning of the book, however I found it very difficult to keep all the characters and their families straight. There are nine different families with a total of 47 characters listed, and this doesn't even include other children in each of the families and additional peripheral characters.
I love the ambiguity of the title - My Brilliant Friend. Through the majority of the book, we assume
that it refers specifically to one of the girls.
However, towards the end of the book , it’s actually the other girl who
says it to her friend - “Not for you,” Lila replies ardently, “you’re my brilliant friend, you have to be the best of all, boys and girls.” Looking at the book as a whole, this phrase can be used to describe each
of the girls.
This author and book series kept popping up as recommended, and I had to wait months for the Kindle version from my library. I started reading it as soon as I downloaded it, but it took me at least 30-40% of the book before I got into the story and the characters. I was ready to abandon the book several times. I plugged away at it and finally got caught up with the story, and I'm giving it a strong three stars. However, I'm not sure whether I'll be reading the three other books in the series. Time will tell.
Content warning for violence.
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