A review by zoebird81
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
3.0
Bare, expansive, and cutting. Feels like mere setup to a larger, brilliant epic—I look forward to reading Neapolitan 2-4—yet there is so much vastness in this tiny little world of 1950s Naples.
I was more easily swept in by the narrators of DAYS OF ABANDONMENT and LYING LIFE OF ADULTS than I was with Elena in MY BRILLIANT FRIEND, but in a Ferrante fashion she remains a visceral beacon of the adolescent female experience. Yet it goes without saying, as it is so obvious, that Lila is the more fascinating of the two—after all, that is why we're kept from her at arm's length. She is a character desperate to leave her world without actually setting foot outside it; her ending in MY BRILLIANT FRIEND is one of the most damning and memorable conclusions to a story (albeit only a beginning for her, really) I've read in a long time.
People are as collapsible as Russian dolls; take away their outlines and they share an essence—after all, how many of us wear different shoes of the same size?
Ferrante has now, for the third time, summarized my experience of reading her prose within her own text: "I felt dazed by the powerful gusts, by the noise. I had the impression that, although I was absorbing much of that sight, many things, too many, were scattering around me without letting me grasp them."
I was more easily swept in by the narrators of DAYS OF ABANDONMENT and LYING LIFE OF ADULTS than I was with Elena in MY BRILLIANT FRIEND, but in a Ferrante fashion she remains a visceral beacon of the adolescent female experience. Yet it goes without saying, as it is so obvious, that Lila is the more fascinating of the two—after all, that is why we're kept from her at arm's length. She is a character desperate to leave her world without actually setting foot outside it; her ending in MY BRILLIANT FRIEND is one of the most damning and memorable conclusions to a story (albeit only a beginning for her, really) I've read in a long time.
People are as collapsible as Russian dolls; take away their outlines and they share an essence—after all, how many of us wear different shoes of the same size?
Ferrante has now, for the third time, summarized my experience of reading her prose within her own text: "I felt dazed by the powerful gusts, by the noise. I had the impression that, although I was absorbing much of that sight, many things, too many, were scattering around me without letting me grasp them."