My Brilliant Friend is
the first book in the four “Neapolitan Novels” of enigmatic Italian
writer Elena Ferrante. The quartet is a huge hit here and abroad.
Adding to its literary interest is the mystery surrounding the author,
about whom little is known, not even whether Elena Ferrante is her real
name.
Let her work speak for itself, the author has said, and there is indeed
much to recommend her Neapolitan series. Most of all is the realism
Ferrante brings to the portrayal of female friendship. The lives of
Elena, the narrator, and Lila are intertwined from their meeting in
first grade in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples in the
1950s. Love and envy, loyalty and rivalry, support and betrayal—their
relationship spans the spectrum at different times, neither all good
nor all bad, just like friendships in real life. Also compelling are
the intense look at the experience of growing up female at a time when
males held all the power; Ferrante’s balanced tone, neither sentimental
nor bitter; and her picture of a confined environment where violence is
taken for granted.
Since Elena is the narrator, Lila presumably is the brilliant friend,
and she is the more naturally gifted of the two. Lila is fierce, cagey,
daring, and sometimes hard to figure out. Elena is self-doubting,
impressionable, and pensive; she measures herself against Lila’s easy
superiority. Sadly, Lila is forced by her family to give up school.
While Elena, a disciplined student, progresses up the academic path
with stellar grades, Lila teaches herself and sometimes tutors Elena.
My Brilliant Friend takes the
girls into their 16th year, ending with Lila’s too-young marriage to a
local grocer. There are dozens of other characters who aren’t
well-developed and can be difficult to keep track of, and not much of a
plot.
The prologue to My Brilliant Friend
takes place a half-century after the body of the book. Elena, age 66,
is the writer she and Lila as children dreamed about becoming. She
receives a call that Lila has gone missing. Convinced that Elena
planned to disappear without a trace, Elena feels angry, so she sits
down to write their story, issuing the challenge “We’ll see who wins
this time.”
Elena and Lila’s tale continues in The
Story of a New Name (2012). American Ann Goldstein has been
praised for her translation of the four novels into English.
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