My brilliant Friend

By Elena Ferrante

Here is a synopsis of what our group thought of this book.

My brilliant friend is the story of two girls born in a poor, conservative, male-dominated, brutal working class neighbourhood (ghetto) in the outskirts of Naples in the 1950s.

There are three main themes in this story: a meditation on the nature of friendship, the portrait of the difficulties of adolescence (their feelings of inferiority, the challenge to feel at ease with oneself) and social mobility.

Ferrante captures the aspects of human relationship with great precision. She has a wonderful, limpid style.

Lenu and Lila, the 2 protagonists of the story, are best friends. They both come from poor families. It is a very complicated friendship. They need each other but don’t find comfort in each other. At the same time they are rivals.

Lenu is smart and disciplined and follows the rules in order to reach her aim which is to get out of her milieu. She tries to escape from her lower class neighbourhood by means of education. She admires Lila but at the same time she is envious of her because she feels academically inferior. She knows she has to work hard to obtain good results. On the other hand, she is a follower, she needs to be inspired by her friend to do her best. So Lenu needs the stimulation of Lila to get on.

Lila is simply naturally and effortlessly brilliant. However she also is wild and uncontrollable. She is going to take a completely different direction and stops her studies to help her family at home. At the same time she will put all her energy into catching the richest man in the area. Since she is not guided by love but by ambition, she might realise later on that she has not made the right choice.

Lila needs a follower and Elena is the only smart person who can understand and accept her the way she is.

The question everybody asks is: which character is the smart one? Who is influenced by whom?

The 2 characters are fascinating. The 2 girls evolve completely differently and the smarter one might not be the one who takes the best decisions.

We noticed that in that part of the world you have to show that you are better off to be appreciated. There is still much machismo amongst young men in the South of Italy.

The end is a real coup de théâtre, un coup de génie which makes this book more interesting.

There is a sequel to this book. Well at first we wanted to read it to know what would happen in the two girls’ lives but for most of us it didn’t add anything, it was mostly  and irritatingly a repetition of the same complicated feelings.

According to the reviews, the author is supposed to be the best Italian novelist today. The English translation is very good. The book is very intense, personal, authentic and honest. It could be an autobiography

One of us evoked a comparison with the story of West Side Story, a musical inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, as it is set in the same kind of neighbourhood with 2 different gangs rivalizing  with each other in an environnement where cars are status symbols and violence between gang members, both men and women, is an everyday occurrence.

Paulette