In addition to writing, “I study, I translate, I teach. The relationship unfolds in the suburbs of Naples with a surprising reversal, as we come to realize just who the "Brilliant Friend" really is. When I arrived with my parents in 1960, things had become a little better, but the town was still one of the poorest in Britain. From the age of two until twelve, I lived in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. This is a coming of age novel, true, but it is also much more than that. Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist. In fact, everyone in the office received a copy – that’s how much our boss wanted us to read it. For the duration, it read l. A not so satisfying read for me. Then it ends abruptly, like part I of a big novel with no part II. I also want to get The Reader newsletter featuring book recommendations and news. And therein lies my problem with it. The only Ferrante novel I had read before was her "Days of Abandonment," which I thought overheated (and overrated). I tried. A modern masterpiece from one of Italy’s most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. ", A not so satisfying read for me. They create a compelling and exciting inner world together, a stage on which they both are able to dramatise themselves as the heroines of their own fate. Amazon. Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist. In general I combine their experiences with my own and Delia, Amalia, Olga, Leda, Nina, Elena, Lenù are born out of that mix. . This is a coming of age novel, true, but it is also much more than that. Want more great books? I believe that Don Achille was one of them, and that is why the people of the district hated him. But the echo that you noticed maybe derives from an oscillation inside the characters that I’ve always worked on. The first part of a trilogy beginning with childhood girlfriends who, come to find out, don’t get past the age of 16 in this first installment. A totally absorbing story of friendship, love and growing up in small town poverty. I received this book as a Christmas present from my boss over a year ago. Rafaella “Lila” Cerullo, Elena’s friend since childhood, has gone missing. My women are strong, educated, self-a, "The women in my stories are all echoes of real women who, because of their suffering or their combativeness, have very much influenced my imagination: my mother, a childhood girlfriend, acquaintances whose stories I know. They were all laughing, even Lila, with the expression of one who has a role and will play it to the utmost.”, Waterstones Book of the Year Nominee (2015). So someone that before WWII was a mere little thief, often after the war become a rich shop or land owner and had a lot of money made on other people suffering. And the world of 1950s and 60s Naples is a brutal one, with young men obsessed to protect brutally their own "honor" and the imagined "honor" of the girls around them. Because in poor neighborhoods where kids see violence (husbands hitting wives) they go out and act this drama out themselves. I wanted it to move into their adult years and become more interesting and relevant to me personally. I’m so sorry. Lord of The Flies is required reading for a reason. What happens. This is contemporary realistic fiction about two women who grow up together in the 1950s and 1960s in a poor neighborhood in Naples. Ferrante's inimitable style lends itself perfectly to this penetrating portrait of two marvelous women. At the end, there is a cliffhanger so brutal I immediately had to go and buy the next volume of this series. Heck, I was middle class and we used to hurl rocks at the neighbors and sometimes dead fish. It is epic in the best sense of the word, and yet quiet and personal in its scope. What happens in this book is often great and often fascinating, but what makes it a classic are the countless little moments of peace and the way that its not scared to repeat itself OR to veer wildly off course to follow its characters. By Iwaki Kei. Much has been written about My Brilliant Friend, so I'm not sure what I can add except for a few reactions to what I see as the three main characters: As my rating reflects, I was overwhelmed by this novel. Still, there is much, much more to this novel than I can go into here--it is a complex work filled with beautiful gems, particularly toward the end. Set in the ‘50s on the outskirts of Naples, the sprawling story follows author-narrator Elena and her clever best friend Lila as the two strive for greatness, wealth, and knowledge in a neighborhood beset by patriarchal feuds and gendered violence. Why am I staying up late at night to finish? “I am made and remade continually. I get that. I read the book in English (because my Italian is not that good yet) and the style was both deeply intimate and jarringly matter-of-fact. Neapolitan Novels Series Elena Ferrante Collection 4 Books Bundle (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Story of the Lost Child) Photo Credit: Featured still from "My Brilliant Friend" via HBO. “My Brilliant Friend is a sweeping family-centered epic that encompasses issues of loyalty, love, and a transforming Europe. Still, it only adds to the intrigue, as you can't help but wonder who writes these marvelous books. Set in the ‘50s on the outskirts of Naples, the sprawling story follows author-narrator Elena and her clever best friend Lila as the two strive for greatness, wealth, and knowledge in a neighborhood beset by patriarchal feuds and gendered violence. Certainly not her mother – “My mother did her best to make me understand that I was superfluous in her life. In fact, I even read books occasionally. My Brilliant Friend, the HBO series directed by Saverio Costanzo, premiered in 2018. This strange turn of events prompts Elena to begin writing the history of her relationship with Lila, beginning with their childhood in Naples, Italy, in the 1950s. We’d love your help. There have been many articles about this author's mysterious anonymity. What makes something a page-turner? "My Brilliant Friend" is a story of friendship—humbling, raw, human friendship—amid the backdrop of a poor section of postwar Naples, Italy. For 200 pages I tried to see what it is about this writer that gets such acclaim, but with 130 pages to go, I abandoned it - there are just too many other books in my waiting pile that I want to read. Elena makes it clear that she cannot know what other characters, especially Lila, were feeling or thinking at certain moments. Not everything works—Elena’s family feels faintly drawn, and some of the character arcs are uneven—but it’s hard to put the novel down. Having a hard time getting through the first hundred pages with all the hitting and rock throwing. Elena grows up side by side with her friend/foil/personal albatross Lila, who is naturally brilliant at everything and more beautiful than Elena, but who is held down by circumstances to work in her father's shoe store while Elena has a chance to escape her life through education. [ like throwing your eleven year old daughter out a window into the street. And probably there was also some kind of affiliation to the camorra and he surely was a loan-shark. I retract any previous negative judgment: she is a major contemporary novelist and I will now go on immediately to her second Neapolitan novel, "The Story of a New Name." 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