Tag Archives: friendship

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

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This novel was, in a sense, eye-opening for me. I find this to be mainly due to the unfortunate circumstances that Lila and Elena endured from such a young age. From poverty to violence and just a struggle of trying to find a way to be something when surrounded by negativity. It really brought a real life connection because there are real people who go through these kinds of life events, immediately after they’re born. The story kind of brought that to the forefront, at least in my mind.

A recurring theme was the jealousy of Elena towards Lila. Like Elena found any attention to be good attention, for example when Lila was said to be missing. Elena somehow still felt like she had passed up an opportunity in some sense. Although this seemed to be an extreme case of jealousy, I can understand how friends can even be envious towards each other. Especially when you’re going through so many life experiences together and then one isn’t involved in something, I guess it can just be summed up as FOMO – fear of missing out.

I liked what appeared as a lack of length from chapter to chapter. The quick transitions were nice, as opposed to having read like 20+ pages and not having such a clear understanding of what happened because of so much in between. Also, the separations of stories within the novel. Like with the labelling of a prologue as “Eliminating All the Traces” and the section on childhood called “the Story of Don Achille.” I just feel like this helps me stay accountable of what I’ve just read and how to piece it together afterwards. Honestly speaking, without these checkmarks I find myself going back in novels often to make sure I haven’t missed something. Catching every detail I can on the first read.

In a way this was a coming of age story that followed pretty realistic aspects of some people’s lives. I also feel like it has appeal to many due to its coverage of so many topics, most people can find something to relate to. This leads me to my question: what aspect of the story did you relate with most and why? Being able to relate to a story always feels more rewarding to me. It’s like a bonus that you got to self reflect through a book that maybe made you realize some things you hadn’t before.

Nada by Carmen Laforet

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The first thing I want to recognize is something I said in a discussion group during my class last week. It was along the lines of whether these texts (that I’ve chosen) will all follow the theme of memories, past experience, or just past tense writing in general. This is the fourth book to do so. Although this has little to do with whether I enjoy the reading at the end of the day, it does make me think about Romantic writing and if the past or memory is an element of it. Or if it just a coincidence. But for some reason I keep finding myself noticing that and questioning if it’s on purpose with all Romance writing. I guess I will soon find out as I continue reading each week.

Within the contents of the book, I wanted to relate to more in certain areas, such as making a close friend as Andrea initially transitioned into university. However, it just isn’t so. The current state of the world, considering safety precautions, masks and all, I feel makes it difficult to engage in conversation and friendships as easily. Not that I haven’t made friends by any means, just not that type of connection Andrea and Ena had. Though I did relate to the university component and

This novel played into the aspect of modernity quite a bit, similar to last week’s reading of The Shrouded Woman by Maria Luisa Bombal. With the main character being a woman and exploring concepts like university, friends, relationships, and such. It brought a more realistic dimension to it all. Also like Bombal’s book there were areas describing love interests, which although this course isn’t about that kind of romance, is nice to see. I feel like woman outwardly expressing their love interests wasn’t so common back when this was published in 1945, so to have two female characters addressing their appeal for romance was refreshing – something new. Additionally, the acknowledgement of Andrea being an orphan also seems to be somewhat in the realm of modernism. I say this for the fact that Laforet even had the idea of bringing forth a concept often looked down upon and that people are so hush-hush about.

All of this brings me to ask, do you believe that the theme of memory/past experience/past tense has something more to do with Romance writing than just a style of writing? It could just be by chance that a lot of writing is written from that sort of point of view or that Romance writing specifically had this embedded in its roots.