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My brilliant friend
Book
2016
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Fiction/Biography Profile
Characters
Elena Greco (Girl), Italian, Best friends with Lila; grew up finishing school; helped Lila get an education by giving her books to read
Lila Cerullo (Girl), Italian, Best friends with Elena; taught herself to read; enjoys books; doesn't confine to social norms; didn't finish school
Genre
Fiction
Historical
Coming of age
Topics
Childhood friendship
Female friendship
Italian culture
Poverty
Obsession
Jealousy
Adolescence
Rivalry
Setting
Italy - Europe
Time Period
1950's -- 20th Century
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Trade Reviews
New York Times Review
Elena Greco, known to all as the porter's daughter in her poor, 1950s Naples neighborhood, always liked school: "Right away, from the first day," it seemed like "a much nicer place than home." She's the teacher's pet, often asked to sit beside the maestra as a reward for her diligence. So it comes as a distressing surprise when Lila Cerullo, the shoemaker's daughter, is invited to take the seat of honor instead. After this initial shock, Elena trains herself to accept Lila's superiority. The charismatic and mysterious Lila is eminently crush-worthy, but it doesn't take much hermeneutic detective work to see that Ferrante thinks her namesake protagonist is brilliant in her own right. She's also more fortunate: Elena's parents allow her to continue her education through high school, whereas Lila's expect her to drop out and start working. By the end of this astute novel, which has been translated into lucid English by Ann Goldstein, these environmental differences have just begun to manifest themselves, setting up the next installment of a planned trilogy.
Publishers Weekly Review
The world of Elena and Lila, Neapolitan girls growing up after the Second World War, is small, casually violent, and confined to their poor neighborhood where everyone knows everyone and the few prosperous families dominate. There are rules and expectations, and everyone knows and lives by them. Except Lila: smarter and bolder than the others, she does what she wants, drawing Elena, who narrates the story, in her wake. But this is more than a conventional up-from-poverty tale. Elena completes her schooling; Lila does not. Elena leaves the neighborhood and eventually Naples and Southern Italy; Lila does not. Yet it is Lila and her dreams and caprices that drive everything. In fact, the narrative exists because the adult Elena, hearing that Lila has disappeared, decides to write Lila's story. And she does, in dense, almost sociological detail (the list of the members of the key families is actually necessary). This is both fascinating-two girls, their families, a neighborhood, and a nation emerging from war and into an economic boom-and occasionally tedious, as day-to-day life can be. But Lila, mercurial, unsparing, and, at the end of this first episode in a planned trilogy from Ferrante (The Lost Daughter), seemingly capable of starting a full-scale neighborhood war, is a memorable character. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In a poor, midcentury Italian neighborhood, two girls, Elena and Lila, exhibit remarkable intelligence early in school, at a time when money is scarce and education a privilege, especially for girls. Only Elena is allowed to continue in school, and she devotes herself to her studies, while Lila redirects her own talent toward her family's business. The girls use each other, sometimes as crutches, sometimes as inspiration, but as they approach adolescence, their friendship is challenged by their changing bodies and attitudes toward the world. Elena increasingly turns toward education as a means of escaping, while Lila looks to her burgeoning beauty as a means of altering the violence and bitterness that threaten their neighborhood. The first book in a prospective trilogy, My Brilliant Friend is a compelling and moving coming-of-age story set in an impoverished neighborhood struggling to come into its own in a rapidly shrinking world. Celebrated Italian author Ferrante's unflinching and insightful prose, which was rancorous in her novel Days of Abandonment (2010), is captivating and hopeful here and will have readers eagerly awaiting the next installment. If comparison is to be found, it may be in Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants (2006) or fellow Italian Silvia Avallone's Swimming to Elba (2012).--Ophoff, Cortney Copyright 2010 Booklist
Summary

#1 BEST BOOK OF THE CENTURY - NEW YORK TIMES

Now an HBO series: the first volume in the New York Times-bestselling "enduring masterpiece" about a lifelong friendship between two women from Naples (The Atlantic).

Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Elena Ferrante's four-volume story spans almost sixty years, as its main characters, the fiery and unforgettable Lila and the bookish narrator, Elena, become women, wives, mothers, and leaders, all the while maintaining a complex and at times conflicted friendship. This first novel in the series follows Lila and Elena from their fateful meeting as ten-year-olds through their school years and adolescence.

Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between two women.

"An intoxicatingly furious portrait of enmeshed friends."--Entertainment Weekly

"Spectacular."--Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air

"Captivating."--The New Yorker

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