MY BRILLIANT FRIENDBook Review [CC]

Hi everyone. Today I'm here to do a book
review of "My brilliant Friend" by Elena Ferrante. Elena Ferrante is an Italian
author who has been publishing novels since the early 1990's but it's only
been in the last two or three years that she's become particularly well-known in
the United States. I think this book is what really launched her career in the
U.S.

But she has had 3 stand-alone novels and this book, which is her 4th
novel, is the 1st book in a series of at least four books right now called the
Neapolitan Novels. And the Neapolitan novels follows two young girls who grow
up in Naples after WWII. What's really interesting about Elena Ferrante is that
she is an anonymous author. The name is a pseudonym and she has chosen to remain out of the public light.

She believes that after a book has been written, it has no need for
the author, so she doesn't do publicity. She doesn't show her face.
Nobody really knows much about her, I'm assuming other than the publisher, and
maybe not even them. I'm not quite sure to the extent that she is known. What we
do know from her comes from correspondences.

She has written
letters to interviewers. She has said that she is a mother so we're pretty
confident that she is a woman. But that would be a really interesting change of
perspective if this author turned out to be a man because the book so strongly
centers around two young girls and their relationship. That's really what has been
praised a lot, about this book is the strong female relationship and dynamics
that we don't often see represented in literature or at least not enough.

So
Elena Ferrante is supposed to be an older woman who is from Naples which is where this book is set and that's all we really know. I found that anonymity
really interesting and kind of freeing going into the story, because
it's almost impossible nowadays to read a book and know absolutely nothing about
the author. And I think im gonna make a separate video about that because it's
just something that I've been thinking about a lot lately, about the blurring
line between sort of public and private author, and author and reader. And
with Elena Ferrante you really get very little about her which just leaves you
to enjoy the story.

And I think that's her intent. I picked this one up because I have been interested in reading more
translated fiction, as you might now, in 2016. And this book is translated from
Italian by Ann Goldstein. She does a great job.

I believe she's translated all
of Elena Ferrante's books from Italian to English. And like I said this book
follows two young girls named Lila and Elena. And the narrator is Elena which is
interesting because that is the author's name so perhaps part of it is
autobiographical and she wants to remain anonymous for that reason. And we follow
Elena and Lila as they grow up in, not a slum, but a lower-class neighborhood in
Naples in the 1950's.

And this book is the first in a series, like I
mentioned, so it ends when they're around the age of 16. So we just get that first
early part of their life, their adolescence, and sort of the competitive
nature of their friendship. I think this book is praised a lot for presenting a
female friendship so strongly in the novel, but what I don't hear a lot about
is the sort of competitive nature of their friendship. Everything, especially
that Elena does, is sort of, not in retaliation to Lila, but in competition.
There's a fascination with bodies and obviously as they're growing up and
going through puberty there is just the central theme of coming into your own.
This one does follow them up into the age of 16 and it is very much a slow
burn of a novel.

The first half of the book took me over a week to read and
then the second half took me like two days. So if you begin to read this and
you're struggling to get through it just know that there's something about it
that you just need to get situated in. And it takes a while to get comfortable with
the setting and everything that's happening and also just familiarizing
yourself with the characters. In the beginning of the novel there is this
massive list of characters because there are so many different families in their
community.

And she just throws out all these names so it does take a while to
get comfortable with that but once you do it's a really rewarding book. After I
finish reading it I went back and read the prologue and the first chapter again
and it was just so much better. There was a lot of things I was unclear about when
I first read it, and obviously after finishing and having the perspective of
the whole book, the beginning was much more clear and understandable. The
prologue is Elena as, I assume, like a 60 year old woman who has gotten a call
from Lila's son that Lila has disappeared and erased every trace of herself.

And
now Elena is going to kind of solidify and ground Lila in real life by writing about
her and recalling their lives together. So Elena really wants to kind of
rebel against Lila's rebellion, and kind of counteract her
disappearance by writing about her. So that alone, I think, sets up an
interesting relationship between the two characters that we get to see sort of
the origin story of in this book. I wish I.

Had a passage to call out because it's
really hard to describe exactly her writing. It isn't particularly flowery
and descriptive but then she has really strong images. Her writing is very to the
point. It's kind of sharp and I think that that might also be why at first I wasn't
really into the story because it's kind of abrasive.

But once you get used to the
hard kind of exterior and you get through that you really get to the meat
of the story which is sort of a love story between two friends. And I don't
mean love in the romantic sense but this idea of companionship and really
deep understanding between two people that's also fraught with the
socio-political aspects of postwar Naples. Because what Elena Ferrante does really well
in the book is situating these two girls' stories and blowing it out of
proportion and making it the whole world. But then also reminding you that these
communities are struggling to get by after the war--and paralleling the girls' relationship
with kind of the community aspects of this little Italian city.

So I thought
that was really fascinating. She doesn't constantly remind you about what is
happening in the community but through the girls' interactions, through the
events that take place, and through their relationships with each other and with
the people around them, you're reminded of just how much of a struggle it is for
these people. There's a lot of kind of familial wars going on between the
different factions, and yeah it's a very tense novel and I think that it
culminates in a really interesting place. And I'm not going to say how it ends
because obviously the books continue and I don't want to spoil anything, but I will say
that if I didn't know that this was going to have more books in it, I would
be very upset, because it does sort of leave you on a high note.

And so I really
enjoyed it. I enjoyed it more in hindsight, in thinking about it, there's
just a lot in my brain kind of stewing about this book which I appreciate. I
think a good book makes you feel something and this one definitely had
moments where I was feeling very strongly about it, either positively or
negatively. So I am interested in your thoughts if you have read this one.

I
don't know a lot of people that have read it, but I really enjoyed it and I'm
definitely going to read the next books. I ordered the second one
immediately after finishing this one. So I. Can't wait to get into that and I will
hopefully have a review for that one when I read it as well.

I hope you guys
enjoy this review. I will see you in my next video. Bye!.