My Brilliant Friend

I read My Brilliant Friend on the strength of the no. 1 spot on the New York Times’s Best Books of the 21st Century. I’d heard it mentioned on their podcast, and read later about the mania for Ferrante’s books that emerged from the first English editions of the Neapolitan quartet in the early 2010s.

The book follows two girls as they grow up in a poor neighbourhood in the suburbs of Naples in the 1950s and 60s. Elena, the narrator, is diligent if uninspired; Lila is fiery and full of insight. Elena gets the opportunity to continue her schooling into adolescence, and thrives in the structured environment; Lila leaves school but (at least for a time) pursues an informal education by proxy, often mastering Elena’s subjects before Elena can. The two girls grow apart as they age—Elena investing more in studies and writing, while Lila attracts the (perhaps unwanted) attentions of the neighbourhood boys. By the end of the novel she’s cornered into a marriage she has serious misgivings about.

It’s good—it’s heartbreaking in slow motion. Like in life, there’s no way to look forward to predict the end; but in retrospect the events of a life seem to unfold inevitably to produce the people that Elena and Lila become. Does that make sense? I’m trying to get at something here. Lila ends up worse off than Elena—and that’s not because Lila makes bad decisions or anything—but the things that happen to Elena, and the things that happen to Lila, add up to what their lives become.

Some of the tension of the book—the tension of the friendship between Elena and Lila—comes from their underlying competitiveness, and from Elena’s implicit belief that Lila is somehow better than she is. For much of the book we believe that the eponymous Brilliant Friend is Lila—but late in the book (almost right on queue) we learn that to Lila, the roles are reversed:

She was silent for a while, staring at the water that sparkled in the tub, then [Lila] said, “Whatever happens, you’ll go on studying.”

“Two more years: then I’ll get my diploma and I’m done.”

“No, don’t ever stop: I’ll give you the money, you should keep studying.”

I gave a nervous laugh, then said, “Thanks, but at a certain point school is over.”

“Not for you: you’re my brilliant friend, you have to be the best of all, boys and girls.”

What else? The prose is very comma-heavy, though whether that’s an artefact of the translation or of the original work I’m not sure as I don’t speak Italian.

I had the impression, from the way she used me, from the way she handled Stefano, that she was struggling to find, from inside the cage in which she was enclosed, a way of being, all her own, that was still obscure to her.

I enjoyed my time with the book, though at no point did I ever really feel compelled by it. Sometimes I struggle to put a book down and read to distraction. Here, I didn't.