Reviews with content warning for Physical abuse - De geniale vriendin

After learning that her lifelong friend, Lila, has vanished, 66-year-old Elena Greco sets out to document everything she knows and remembers about her. Through Elena's eyes, we see a complicated but intense friendship develop as she recounts their childhoods in their impoverished Neapolitan suburb. Her story chronicles the two girls' interactions with each other and their community, and it soon becomes clear that the friendship, however strong and loving, bristles with rivalry and envy. While the girls' entries into adolescence take them down different paths, they face the challenge of finding balance between dependence and independence, rivalry and encouragement, but also the challenge of finding a place for one another in their changing lives.

I don't doubt for a moment that My Brilliant Friend will be my best read of 2021. Ferrante's emotive writing stirred a slight obsession in me and led me to do something I've never done before: immediately reread a book. The story embedded firmly in my mind and I had the need to learn and understand their stories more deeply. I'm insanely happy to know that there are three more books to read in this series and that I won't say goodbye to these characters for some time.

I would like to kick off my review by stating that My Brilliant Friend is especially strong in the area of characterization. Some readers might find Ferrante's cast too dense and can easily get confused between the numerous secondary characters - I know I did. The story includes about eight families and each family member is named and described to some extent. Their own stories are interwoven with both Elena and Lila's own, and you soon realize that these characters possess their own important place within the bigger picture. To help readers navigate between all the different names and families, Ferrante included a useful character list at the beginning of the book. You can easily page back and and forth to remind you who is who and how are they linked.

Except for the potentially overwhelming cast, the characterization is beautifully executed. The descriptions of characters are comprehensive and include both physical and psychological details. You truly get to create a mental picture of their appearance and their personalities with Ferrante's detailed portrayals. The characters are also all vivid and dynamic and most of them undergo some level of character development. What is lovely is that you are intimately part of every step of those developments, especially Elena's. I personally found her narration relatable and realistic. She recounts her childhood with such clarity and in such detail, but at the same time reflects on it with keen understanding of herself and her childhood circumstances. While she recounts her transition from child to teenager, it's gripping to read her tumultuous thoughts and feelings towards herself and her surroundings while simultaneously reading her acute insight as the 60-year-old narrator.

The amazing characterization is best experienced in the beautifully complex relationship between Elena and Lila. The dynamics of their relationship are intricate and at times slightly harmful. Even though you can clearly see the love and admiration they have for each other, particularly Elena's passions, there is a dominant strife between them. In some ways, these girls are polar opposites and Elena frequently, at times somewhat obsessively, comments on their differences. Elena is the sturdy, reliable, good character; Lila is the unpredictable, turbulent, bad character. They are both intelligent, but wheras Elena's intelligence stems from hard work, Lila's brilliance seemingly comes natural and thus Elena feels the need to compete and keep up. You can say that the rivalry between them originated in this academic sphere, but then evolved to more social domains later on in the book when the older girls started attracting the attention of boys. From start to finish, you clearly see how both girls, not just Elena, envy one another and how their self-worth is dependent on how they measure up against each other. It's a turbulent relationship and Ferrante depicts it artfully.

The pacing of the book confused me, though, since it's slow and fast at the same time. For the first half of the book, I struggled to move through the story and I felt that nothing was really happening in terms of plot development. In hindsight, I realize this was due to a lack of focus on my part and a busy schedule; during my second read I could easily pick up on subtle plot points that moved the story on. That being said, this is not a plot driven story and you don't really feel like there's much action. In that sense, the story reads slow. You're constantly waiting for something to happen, but nothing big actually happens, although the first novel ends on a slight cliff-hanger and leaves you feeling quite panicked. It's like the book is building towards something but we never find out what. I suspect the true climax (that's to say if there is one) will be in the second or third book of the series. So this lack of prominent action might be off-putting to some readers who prefer a more animated storyline. I however appreciate the stronger focus on character development and wasn't bothered by a slower pace.

But as I mentioned, on the other hand, My Brilliant Friend also has a fast pace, particularly in terms of time. When Elena begins her story, she starts at the age of what I guess is 6 years, when she started school. The first book ends when she's 16. So in 300 pages, Elena takes us through 10 years, without it actually feeling like 10 years. At times you still have the image of a little 8 or 9-year-old girl in your mind, but then you're actually reading about a 14 or 15-year-old. I think Elena's secondary school experience was described in only a few chapters and then you're transported into her high school life where more pressing matters take place.

The setting is one of the aspects of the book that I feel most conflicted about. I love the placement of the novel. I mean, I love all things Italy, so I immediately fell in love with the setting. I also believe that Ferrante is as successful in her descriptions of the setting, as she is in her descriptions of characters. As a reader, you truly taste the bitter flavor of impoverished Naples in the 1950s. The sounds and appearances of their neighborhood gives off a sense of being choked by dust, misery and oppression. Your understanding of the setting is even more vivid when the characters start venturing farther out of the neighborhood, especially when Elena visits the island Ischia.

But I guess it is the true and vivid depiction of the setting that also bothered me most. The characters' behaviors truly reflect their time. There's a lot of violence, enough to turn some readers away from the book. The violence isn't graphic, but it's frequent and written as very commonplace occurrences - which I trust they probably were in those times. Already in the first few chapters do you read about beatings, rock throwing, threats, shouting and cursing, and to make matters worse, these conflicts mostly happen among the neighborhood's children and within families. Your heart bleeds for the characters at times, because reading it from a present time perspective, you understand that this violence is unnecessary and harmful, and shouldn't be accepted so generally by the characters.

One aspect of the novel that left a bitter taste in my mouth was how young the girls are in relation to the book's events. In our current time, we would shudder at the thought of a 16-year-old marrying a 20-something. But in the story, it was encouraged, almost forced, and it feels wrong to place such a big life-changing event on what is undeniably still a young girl. I didn't pick up on this slight discomfort in my first time reading My Brilliant Friend, but it was much more prominent in the second reading.

No doubt this book won't be for everyone, but what I definitely am sure about is that My Brilliant Friend is a good book, a skillful and artful composition with numerous great qualities.

Content Warnings