My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante

⭐ 8.5/10

(Originally written by Tim)

Quite the departure from my usual reading, but I picked this up for Jess after a friend at work recommended it. I saw all the incredible reviews online, so I decided to give it a try before her, and I am glad I did.

This is book one of a four part series following the lives of two female friends growing up in a small poor town outside of Naples. It is told chronologically, so book one is their childhood and adolescence, and I assume the remaining books pick up from there. It seems to be semi-autobiographical, since it is told in first person, the main character dreams of leaving her situation and becoming an author, and her name is the same as the author's (although I think that is a pen name). As I said, not usually the kind of book I go for, but somehow I found myself relating to characters in situations I will never experience.

The story is very detailed, told in short chapters that illustrate a defining moment in the lives of these girls, and I was hooked very on. The way the she describes the town and the people in it is filled with child-like wonder and fear, but also gave me nostalgia for places and memories that are not mine. Both girls are very smart (in their own ways) and feel that they don't belong where they are. They dream of bigger and better things but struggle to find hope of a way out, again in their own ways, and are constantly comparing and weighing themselves against the other. I found this back and forth pretty interesting, and as of the first book it seemed to be more detrimental to their progress than anything.

At one point I was wondering if we were getting an unreliable narrator, but the voice of the story is pretty self-deprecating. She is constantly trying to impress and be like her friend, and the feeling of watching someone so self-conscious and insecure really has you rooting for her to succeed.

They grow, they learn, they grow apart, they search for love, it's all here. It ends with a pretty crushing cliffhanger, but I thought it fit with the story and serves as a good separator between these well-defined stages of their lives. I will be ordering the rest of the books.