Will I love My Brilliant Friend?

"My Brilliant Friend" is the first of four books following the lives of fictional characters, Elena Greco, and her close friend, Raffaella Cerullo (Lila). The other three books are "The Story of a New Name", "Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay", and "The Story of the Lost Child". The books are full of well-crafted characters, with their lives set mainly in Naples. I read all four books back-to-back and loved them. An excellent translation by Ann Goldstein helped. The story carries you along, through ups and downs, but you really need to know how the relationships develop and how… show more.

This is actually just the first book of Ferrante’s four Neapolitan novels, which tell a single riveting story of two girls, Lila and Lenù, from a depressed Naples neighborhood. Lenù is the narrator, taking us through fifty years of friendship and the latter half of the 20th century. (Her actual name is Elena, like the author—another doubling, especially since she writes under a pseudonym.)

I am a sucker for event: a lot happens and we get to know a huge cast of characters from the neighborhood. But our anchors are these two friends and rivals, vibrant and injured, striving to… show more.

Ferrante's writing is masterful. Her treatment of girlhood resonated with such truth and insight. A beautiful story to treasure and reread with endless delight.

Though the book is set in a fictional neighborhood at the eastern periphery of Naples (Italy), many–including myself–have recognized it as Rione Luzzatti, the place where I spent most of my childhood and puberty, from 1972 to 1982.

This is not the colorful Naples known to tourists, but rather a place where the silent majorities struggle to stay afloat, or even rise up above their pre-established place in the class and gender order, like the two main characters of the story do, each one in her own special way.

I could not help identifying myself with the narrating character Lenú… show more.

Just a rich rendering of a time and place.

I fell in love with the entire Brilliant Friend series. Ferrante moves in so closely to her characters, so imitimately, I felt like I was right up next to them in Naples. 

And of course, I loved the book because it takes place in Italy. Lila and Lenu, the two main characters, are both struggling to know who they are, not just as Italian women, but as individual women.

Growing up in a small rural community where education wasn't much valued amongst the working class population, I related to the main character in this book. She defies expectations and pursues an elite education (like I did) and then struggles the rest of her life stuck between the world she was born into and the world she now inhabits as an educated person.

This is a story about two friends who take wildly different paths in life. Both have brilliant minds. But one chooses to pursue an education while the other chooses marriage and work in the neighborhood of Naples… show more.

I found myself fascinated by the development of the friendship between two Italian girls in Naples. They have known each other almost from birth but have held tight to each other as they have grown into very different lives, careers, and marriages in a city plagued by economic chaos and a local mafia.

Every detail is rich and pertinent; I could see and feel the city as they grew into adulthood, and I could agonize over the choices presented to them and cheer when they found their own paths to fulfillment. The story evolves over three more volumes, but this… show more.

Although I have read a number of novels focused on friendship, this one stands out with particular vigor. It started the way I expected: two friends since childhood. The more I advanced into the reading, though, the more I perceived the two main characters—Elena and Lila—as the same person:  a sort of super-protagonist that incorporates not only the psychological traits of the two but their lives as well.

If it’s true that life is often a fight between who we are and who we would like to be, then this novel portrays that conflict masterfully. What I saw in this… show more.

This book is the first in a series of books that celebrate the lifelong friendship of Elena and Lila, who meet as young girls in a rough and tumble neighborhood in 1950s Naples, Italy. I applaud the author's skill in weaving a setting that was beautiful despite what many would consider ugly. 

I loved this whole series mostly because it celebrates the power and ever-evolving dynamic of female friendship through the many different stages of the character's lives and the events that they must overcome.