From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

My Brilliant Friend (My Brilliant Friend, #1)

Elena Ferrante,

Ann Goldstein (Translator)

Start date: August 1, 2015

Finish date: August 31, 2015

Discussion: International Book Group Read

Discussion leader: Lise Petrauskas

Why we're reading this: International Book Group Read for August.
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International Book Group Read

International Book Read - Embers (December 2015)
By Sera · 91 posts · 41 views

last updated Jan 13, 2016 06:05AM

International Book Read - My Brilliant Friend (August 2015)
By Sera · 64 posts · 53 views

last updated Sep 05, 2015 06:30PM

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What Members Thought

Jul 05, 2016 Petra rated it really liked it

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I liked the complex nature of Elena and Lila's relationship, even if I didn't understand the attraction at times. Friendship is complicated.
The community surrounding these two friends is lively and volatile. The European feel of a community comes through with the gossip, the leaning out the windows, the knowing of everyone's business. It was delightful and entertaining.

From the first pages, one knows that one has to be invested in the entire series to go the ful ...more

21 likes · Like · see review

Aug 11, 2018 Viv JM rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-historical, read-in-2018, women-in-translation, in-translation, z2018-atw-winter-olympics-challenge, author-female, z2018-atw-translated-lit-challenge, z2018-author-female, z2018-wit, z2018-read-harder-challenge

I finally got round to starting the Neopolitan series, and yes, I can totally see why this has captivated so many people. There is such a strong sense of time and place, with a great cast of characters. I look forward to continuing the series.

I read this for the Read Harder Challenge task to read a book with a cover you hate. I mean, it is pretty awful, isn't it?! ...more

13 likes · Like · see review

Apr 28, 2020 Nadine in California rated it liked it · review of another edition

This book is a total immersion into a working class neighborhood in Naples circa the 1950's. As I read, I pictured it as a black and white Antonioni film complete with the wine, cigarettes, yelling, fighting, tiny cars and big hair. But the book takes you inside these stereotypes, and shows how it felt to live in this world, especially for two young girls who navigate through it, striving for a better life than their mothers had. I wasn't expecting it to be such a propulsive read, since it deals ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Aug 20, 2015 Irene rated it really liked it

This is a brilliantly written coming of age account of two friends in a working class neighborhood of Naples in the mid 20th century, a neighborhood where conflicts are solved by violence and lives are entangled, with limited horizons, poor families and even more impoverished dreams.

3 likes · Like · see review

Jun 12, 2014 Rachel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

It's amazing how female friendships can be so intense, all-consuming and even toxic sometimes. There was something clunky about the writing at times, but there was also something classic as well. ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Aug 01, 2015 Jennifer rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2015, rt

You have to love Italy. If you are a skinny girl, how can you possibly be offended by being compared to a salted anchovy?

3 likes · Like · see review

Jan 24, 2022 Christopher rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: bildungsroman, fiction, 21st-century, italian

Beautiful, flowing prose, combined with visceral, violent content. And I don't mean violent in that heads are getting chopped off and guts are spilling everywhere. That sort of thing is much easier to stomach than what's in this book. Here, young girls are menaced by their fathers and they're treated as commodities by the people who are supposed to love them. Strangers' eyes run up and down their bodies and as young teenagers, men a decade older fight over them.

There's not a lot of unconditional ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Sep 06, 2020 Wendy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: in-translation, audiobooks, 2020

I avoided this book for years due to the hype. I finally picked it up on a whim and flew through it in a little over a week. It's a strangely compelling book with an episodic, almost cyclical storyline that echoes real life, centered on an uncomfortably one-sided friendship, as narrated by an emotionally codependent girl. Set in an impoverished neighborhood in Naples, there's a grit and that grounds the high emotions, and layers of monetary and gender inequality that complicate the relationships ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Feb 01, 2015 Lise Petrauskas rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 21st-century-fiction, italia

I had mixed feelings about the book in the end. I started out really liking it and being excited about where it was going.The end was not satisfying at all, which is to be expected, I suppose for a first part in a series. I also suspect that there was some vitality lost in translation. I kind of hope so, actually.

The story of the friendship was compelling to me while some of the other stuff was not. I feel like the book rambled and took its time in places where if I had been making editing deci ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Jun 13, 2017 Sera rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: series, own, literary-fiction

Solid story about two girls growing up in Naples, Italy who become close friends. Ferrante's writing made me feel as if I was part of the world in which these girls grew up with all of its grittiness, violence and dreams of making a better life for oneself.

I really enjoyed following the journey of these characters, and I will be definitely continuing with the series.

I highly recommend this book. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Aug 25, 2015 S.L. Berry rated it liked it

Shelves: audiobooks

My Brilliant Friend did not grab me immediately. A time or two I came close to not continuing listening to it. The esoteric nature of the writing kept me at a distance. As a result I never formed an emotional attachment to the characters while over time, I became hooked on the story, wanting to know more, yet oddly glad when the novel ended. Ferrante’s style of writing is similar to that of male writers. My Brilliant Friend was a refreshing change, a break from recent emotionally-charged novels. My Brilliant Friend did not grab me immediately. A time or two I came close to not continuing listening to it. The esoteric nature of the writing kept me at a distance. As a result I never formed an emotional attachment to the characters while over time, I became hooked on the story, wanting to know more, yet oddly glad when the novel ended. Ferrante’s style of writing is similar to that of male writers. My Brilliant Friend was a refreshing change, a break from recent emotionally-charged novels.

The premise of the novel is relatively simple. Set in Naples in the mid-20th century, the main character, Elena grow up in the shadow of her childhood friend Lila, for the most part living her life vicariously through Lila. Elena alternately wants to be free of Lila and to be like Lila, for Lila to approve of her. This state of being for Elena persists through the end. In one unexpected scene near the end, I believe cheapens the narrative, the obsessiveness transforms into voyeurism. That scene did not seemed to be Elena talking but the author.

My Brilliant Friend is Elena’s struggle to choose between the then-traditional role for women, domesticity and that of an unheard life of promise, enriched by her studies. It is also conversely the story of wistful thinking that at time borders on being mean spirited and envious by Lila of Elena and her choices. Lila’s choice not to take the middle school entrance exam ensures that her path is one of marriage, children and tending her husband’s grocery store—domesticity. The novel covers the girls’ formative years ending sixteen years later during Lila’s wedding reception. The differences between the girls and the reasons behind Lila’s choice of marriage to a wealthy son/inheritor of the neighborhood grocery store are the guts of the novel.

Along the way the reader meets Elena and Lila’s family. The families are roughly alike except for Elena’s father who understands, a bit come lately and with considerable reluctance, that Elena’s education should be fostered. Lila and her family figure prominently in the narrative. She is the future of her family—a good marriage to a boy with money is the family’s purpose. In the prologue, which is written as it supposed to be (e.g. featuring a scene that appears to have nothing to do with the story that follows afterwards), Reno is introduced as Lila’s no account older Her father like most is portrayed as heavy-handed with the children and his mostly submissive wife. Neighborhood toughs, modeled after low ranking Sicilian mob soldiers, working class somewhat literate youths, teachers, a married philandering poet, his avenging wife and angry brilliant son, the poet’s castigated lover and her defender son, and a presumed Fascist/Nazi collaborator and his family round out to a large degree the rest of the characters.

A recurrent theme is the poor relation or the red headed stepchild. Naples is dirty, poverty-stricken, rough in contrast to nearby affluent areas. Other examples: a girl from the outside all dolled up in her green dress and her companion in his expensive outfit compared to Elena, Lila, and her friends in their worn and threadbare clothes, the middle and high school Elena attends being deemed not as good as those in other neighborhoods, Lila’s relatives and friends waiting to be served at the reception while the groom’s side begin their first course and are served the best wines, the shoe store in town refusing to sell the shoes designed by Lila and made in the family’s cobbler shop and Lila’s tormentor waltzing in the middle of the reception.

Another theme is the past continuing to live on, exacting tolls, haunting future generations. When do the crimes and wrongs stop being visited on later generations? When does it become revenge? Lawlessness for the sake of remembering?

My Brilliant Friends deals with all of the above, and more, some in exacting detail, though mostly leaving unanswered questions ending as the narrative does. There are three more in the series. Will there be answers? ...more

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Apr 23, 2016 Rosana rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audio-books, 2016

I am going to wait until I finish the 3 books in this series and review them as a unit. I have started on the second book, The Story of a New Name, and I feel that they are too strongly linked to even think of them as separated units.

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The review for the series:

Even if we don’t admit or try to deny it, we all have a difficult relationship with mirrors. As I age, I believe I have become more disdainful of it, less preoccupied with the reflection of myself, less worried that I don’t con I am going to wait until I finish the 3 books in this series and review them as a unit. I have started on the second book, The Story of a New Name, and I feel that they are too strongly linked to even think of them as separated units.

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The review for the series:

Even if we don’t admit or try to deny it, we all have a difficult relationship with mirrors. As I age, I believe I have become more disdainful of it, less preoccupied with the reflection of myself, less worried that I don’t conform to some societal rules of beauty or femininity. Yet, if I don’t scrutinize the mirror as I once did in my teenage years – oh, those years when the mirror seemed to reflect so much of my perceived faults – these days the mirror surprises me. There are times when a fast glance shows not the person I perceive myself to be, but I get glimpses of my mother, my grandmothers, my sisters, or even my father in a nanosecond of time. A smile, a wrinkle, a stance… all remind me of others, what I have become or will become, and what I am no longer.

What if then the mirror was alive, an organic entity, that also changed as time went by? Would the mirror see in us its faults? Would the mirror idealize us or hate us?

In this series – I am writing this one single review for the 4 books as I felt them to be too interconnected to be reviewed separately – Elena Ferrante’s writing made me think of mirrors constantly. The 2 main characters lives are connected in a web of relationships, friendship, cultural and geographical background, aspirations, tragedy, envy, love and hate. They reflected each other’s lives and used such reflection as measurement of themselves, either being propelled forward by the comparison, or held back in a stated of continual resentment and hurt for what they did not achieve. We all have experienced this, I am sure. The facebook friend’s vacation that reminds us that we have not had a vacation in a long time. The high school classmate that looks so much younger, happier and richer than we do. Or the one that has been struck by personal tragedy and that reminds us that our own lives are blessed after all. All reflecting back at us, as true mirrors, our unfilled dreams, our shortcomings and, if we perceive ourselves being happy and successful, our pride and entitlement.

In the background of the main storyline, the lives of two women for more than 50 years, we learn of the neighborhood dynamics in this Naples shantytown, then of the political and cultural waves happening in Italy. We are exposed to motherhood, feminism, class warfare, family dysfunction, sexual awakening, violence, etc, etc, etc….

If I have one complain about Elena Ferrante’s writing is that it seems too long winding at times. She – whoever she may be, or he, as Elena Ferrante is an alias and although all the speculation about its true identy, we might never know – has a love for words and descriptions. We as readers can almost feel the pleasure she must have felt writing long and beautiful lines. I felt as drunk for her words as she must have felt writing them. But at times I wished that the narrator hurried on. The amount of detail seemed unnecessary and overly done. However I will forgive her, because when it was finally done, I felt sorry that she had not keep on going and lulled me along for yet longer.

I should mention that I listened to the whole series in audio and that Hilary Huber does a beautiful and nuanced reading of it.
...more

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Jan 20, 2015 Heather(Gibby) rated it really liked it

Shelves: audio-book

I listened to this as an audio book, and it did very well in this format as the story is told in mainly chronological order following two girls growing up in a poor neighborhood in Naples.
Although it is a great story, with strong characters, I think I had greater expectations than what it delivered. I liked it enough to continue with the series, but I really hope Elena can learn to become her own person.

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