After reading Elena Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend”, a novel I found out late is the first in a four part series titled the “Neapolitan novels”, I found myself completely spellbound and enraptured by a novel in a way that I hadn’t been in a while. On its surface this feeling perplexed me, as I found myself loving nearly all the books that I have read over the course of this class and in many ways, this novel is far more stripped back then the rest of our catalogue. Comparatively, this story is told without grand stylistic experimentation and sparsely uses poetic language, in favour of a style of prose that is of a more familiar, comfortable vernacular. It also is not as mysterious or illusory as other stories have been, replacing mysticism and interpretation with direct and explanatory language. What the novel may lack in stylistic experimentation it more than makes up for in constructing a narrative of a girl, her best friend, and the lives of the people in their impoverished neighborhood in Naples that is full of all the vigor of genuine life that managed to ensnare me in how epic, yet personal, this narrative feels. While I do admit I am generally a fan of coming of age stories more generally, I believe that this story is a masterclass in this style, effortlessly weaving between the different points in our character’s lives and how their outlooks may change with their changing circumstances. Elena’s relationship with Lina is in particular, an incredible display of genuine friendship, not because it is perfect and idealized, but because it is at times joyous and at other times confusing. Their friendship is often transactional, and while their relationship twists and turns, with both girls oscillating between admiration and envy of each other, culminating in an eventual divide that must inevitably lead to the resentment a 60 year old Elena holds for Lila. This relationship, along with relationships of various kinds, rivalries, friendships, animosities, loves, are described intimately by our narrator who is keen to describe her feelings openly to her audience in a way that pulls you directly into her headspace, the first person perspective and style of prose pulling you directly into Elena’s life in a way that closes any distance between reader and narrator. While the particularities of Elena’s life and relationships are front and center narratively, they all exist atop the backdrop of the growing economic divide driven by the capitalistic expansion of global post-war consumerist markets. The impact this has is that Lina, naturally gifted in anything she sets her mind to and rebellious to a fault, is crushed under the weight of the ever increasing economic disparity and depravity being placed upon her. Elena in contrast, is a hard worker and is also a wonderful student however much of her success, which in ideal circumstances could have just as easily been achieved by Lila, is informed by socioeconomic fortune such that she could claw her way out of their communities’ economic hardships while the bright and driven Lila is left behind like a light slowly engulfed by blizzard that slowly muffles it despite how brightly it tries to burn. This frames the intimate narrative around a scathing commentary on classist socioeconomic structures and how these various oppressive forces serve to interact with and inform these relationships in ways that tend to hold people back from their greatest potential. The novel ends on our protagonists around the age of 16, and I was delighted to find out there are more volumes in this narrative as I found that it so fully enthralled me in its simple yet deeply intimate and emotionally salient story that I can’t wait to read more.

My question for readers is what did you think of Elena and Nina’s friendship/rivalry? Did you think it accurately reflects many real-life friendships? how do you think socioeconomic status influences the opportunities of our characters? How would you compare Ferrante’s prose and writing style to the other author’s we’ve covered in class?