I read My Brilliant Friend over three days. I started Sunday afternoon and finished this morning around 9:00am. Originally, it was because I left this reading to the last minute. I had been told it was a dense read. When I checked some Goodreads reviews, some people didn’t even give My Brilliant Friend any stars, while many gave it five stars. Settling in to read, I was at first rather unsettled by the poverty, the violence of the children, to the children and to each other in this small Naples community in the 1950’s. The cast of characters is large, with the two main characters being good friends. At twelve years of age, Lila is tough and mean, and Elena, timid and shy. The remaining characters are the children and parents of several families. (This is where I need to tell you that I’ve left my copy of My Brilliant Friend behind today, so can’t refer to the exact number of families.) Names are similar, some having nicknames. There are three themes that run through this story - poverty, the accepted dominance of men and poor understanding about the value of education. There were some times of kindness and some of fun, but they seem fleeting within each life. Underscoring all of this is the violent nature of the struggle for community dominance, or just survival within the community. These themes show how difficult it was for people to move out of and away from this very insular life. Those people not willing or able to use violence, became quiet or devious. The discussion today brought forward all of these issues, with an especial dislike of the violence and female suppression, trying to understand the reasons. Was it cultural? How much did poverty play a part? Was it education or money that would move anyone out of the maelstrom that Lila and Elena grew up in?
I have always enjoyed stories that are about family dynamics. My Brilliant Friend is so much more. Family dynamics with the troubled and unsettled dynamics of this community in post World War II Naples. Will I read the next in this Neapolitan Series? I definitely hope to, following this friendship from where it left off in late adolescence and onward.
“We were twelve years old, but we walked along
the hot streets of the neighbourhood,
amid the dust and flies that the occasional old trucks
stirred up as they passed, like two old ladies
taking the measure of lives of disappointment,
clinging tightly to each other. No one understood us,
only we two - I thought - understood one another."
~ Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend
Title: My Brilliant Friend
Author: Elena Ferrante
Translated by: Ann Goldstein
Publ
isher: Europa Editions
Publication Date: Sept. 15, 2012
(First published oct. 19, 2011)
Format: Soft Cover
ISBN10: 1609450787
ISBN13: 9781609450786
Type: Fiction
Four part Series: My Brilliant Friend
The Story of a New Name (2013),
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2014)
The Story of the Lost Child (2015)
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