My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
“There was something unbearable in the things, in the people, in the buildings, in the streets that, only if you reinvented it all, as in a game, became acceptable. The essential, however, was to know how to play, and she and I, only she and I, knew how to do it.”
My Brilliant Friend is the first installment in a quartet documenting the lives and the friendship of childhood companions, Elena and Lila. Elena’s voice spins the story told, but soon the reader will realize that it is Lila who is the central force at which the rest of the story orbits. Over the course of the novel, we follow these two girls as they grow up in an Italian neighborhood strife with poverty, violence, and complex family politics and tensions in the 50’s and 60’s.
This novel at its core is a portrait of womanhood, and what better way to convey the nuance and complexities of female identity than through the lens of one of the most universal and telling female experiences: one’s first codependent female friendship. The relationship between Elena and Lila is the backbone of this novel, morphing and evolving as the story itself morphs and evolves. Elena’s warped perception of Lila growing up manifests itself in many shapes, including blind devotion, curling jealousy, molten resentment. Each pulse and crack in their relationship reveals insight into a different, often inexplicable facet of girlhood.
Ferrante does not stray away from social commentary either, deliberately setting her story in a neighborhood that is for all intents and purposes at the very crux of societal and economic conflict. Throughout the novel, Elena faces the repercussions of class conflict, whether it be through the constant push and pull in her ability to continue her journey in education or the festering tension between Lila’s brother’s crowd and the gleaming Solaras.
As the first installment to a series of four, the role of My Brilliant Friend is to pull you in – to foster an attachment to the characters and their various trials and tribulations. In that respect, Ferrante triumphs. When you finish reading the last page of this marvelous first volume, you will feel as though you grew up with these complex and complicated characters as your dearest friends. You will feel as though you walked the streets of Naples in the 50’s and 60’s, hiding from the sinister shadow of Don Achille or wandering down the streets of Port’Alba.
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