Not only am I pretty late to the Elena Ferrante party, works like My Brilliant Friend (2012)–that is, what is considered “serious” contemporary literature, stuff that is positively reviewed in major newspapers and the like–rarely finds its way onto my reading pile. I don’t have much to add to the wealth of material on this book, the first of Ferrante’s four volume Neapolitan series.
The most successful element of the book is the central friendship between Elena and Raffaella (or, as they are more usually referred to, Lenù and Lila), which is traced in My Brilliant Friend from when they were very young girls well into their teenage years (which, in Naples in the middle of the 20th century includes marriage for one of them). The two are well matched, but follow separate trajectories–one using their academic success as a vehicle to escape the small neighborhood that rings their lives, the other embarking on a more traditional arc of marriage, albeit to what amounts, within that context, to a transgressive choice of partner.
Transgression is a central theme of the book: Lenù spectacularly exceeds the academic expectations of young women of her time and place, allowing her to literally exit from the neighborhood to pursue higher education; Lila who, if anything, was even more intellectually gifted, picks and chooses her moments to move beyond the expectations of those around her. These scenes, which range from trips into dark cellars to the production of a self-designed line of footwear to the constant negotiation of the changing political landscape of their few blocks on the outskirts of Naples, are portrayed with a direct touch that manages to never overstate their objective importance while retaining their primacy for the characters involved.
The key question is whether the friendship is sufficient: for many, the honesty and clarity with which the intense, somewhat obsessive nature of youthful friendships (and, perhaps, specifically young, female friendship) will carry the book through its entirety.
#WhatIWishICouldDo
Other than be spectacularly successful and generate a global buzz in the pursuit of uncovering my true identity? There is an honesty to Ferrante’s writing that is to be emulated: this is, I believe, what allows the book to simultaneously present the events from the perspectives of children and young adults and to never feel juvenile, to never lose a sense of sophistication in its world-building.