Jean-Paul’s Rating: 5/5 stars
A word of warning about “My Brilliant Friend”: This is a book best read in physical book form. The reason being there are a lot of characters and it is very difficult to keep track of who’s who and what their relationship to anyone is and Mrs. Ferrante graciously recognized this and adorned the front of the book with a cast of characters which you will likely have to consult often. It becomes unwieldy to flip back and forth when using an e-reader.
A second word of warning: This is a book that doesn’t end. I mean, there’s a last word that ends the book, but it is more of an abrupt end than an ending with any sort of closure. This is highly annoying to certain people. I think it’s worth it. So be prepared to read all four books in the series if you’re looking for actual closure. I say this not knowing how book four ends, though perhaps a hint is shown in how book one begins. I can already attest that book two opens right where book one ended so it makes sense that the others would continue and we would come full circle to the beginning of book one.
“My Brilliant Friend” is a beautiful and violent portrayal of friendship between two girls, Elena and Lila, growing up in a poor section of Naples in the 1960s. Theirs is a unique relationship formed by both differences and commonalities, by intelligence and competition, by jealousy and love. The story is told by Elena so we get to see her worries and insecurities in a very raw form and we see Lila solely through Elena’s eyes as a confident and slightly enigmatic person. It is unclear throughout whose sphere of influence is stronger, though Elena would surely say that Lila’s was and Lila would likely find it an uninteresting question. Their friendship is also tinged with deep affections and you get the feeling that, if Lila moved close and kissed Elena, a dam would break and the two would get lost in each other forever. I am certain that Lila would need to be the one to initiate it. I am less certain that Lila would feel anything if she did or if she would just do it to see what would happen. Both Elena and Lila are fascinating character studies and I found myself imagining throughout the book what the two would do in certain situations.
Many people will be shocked by the level of day to day violence portrayed in “My Brilliant Friend”. Those people likely did not grow up poor. Being poor is like Atlas carrying the crushing weight of the world on his shoulders at all times. That weight never goes away and is at times unbearable and it is in those unbearable times where the violence occurs. It is anger, yes, but it is also frustration at things beyond one’s control made manifest in the forms of kicks and punches towards those who happen to be at hand. I did not grow up in that environment, but I grew up adjacent to it and have born witness.
Ferrante is Italian and the original novel was written in Italian. Like any wonderfully written book translated from its original language to my native English, I wonder what intricacies of words, what intimacies of phrase are lost in the translation. Obviously, the translators did a brilliant job for “My Brilliant Friend”, otherwise I would not have liked it as much as I did, but I also find myself longing to read the novel in its original form so I can catch all the nuances of language that are untranslatable. If only time were infinite.
After reading “My Brilliant Friend”, I certainly know what the next three novels I am going to read are. This is just book one of a four part series called the Neapolitan Novels. Having just started book two, “The Story of a New Name”, I can already say that I am as enraptured with the second book as I was with the first. It is going to be a good couple of reading months.