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Meine geniale Freundin
(L'amica geniale #1)
by
Sie könnten unterschiedlicher kaum sein und sind doch unzertrennlich, Lila und Elena, schon als junge Mädchen beste Freundinnen. Und sie werden es ihr ganzes Leben lang bleiben, über sechs Jahrzehnte hinweg, bis die eine spurlos verschwindet und die andere auf alles Gemeinsame zurückblickt, um hinter das Rätsel dieses Verschwindens zu kommen.
Im Neapel der fünfziger Jahre w ...more
Im Neapel der fünfziger Jahre w ...more
Hardcover, 422 pages
Published
September 29th 2016
by Suhrkamp Verlag
(first published October 19th 2011)
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Start your review of Meine geniale Freundin (L'amica geniale #1))

I received this book as a Christmas present from my boss over a year ago. In fact, everyone in the office received a copy – that’s how much our boss wanted us to read it. Before you start wondering what sort of wonderful place I worked at, let me clarify it was a literary agency, so such things were totally commonplace. So despite the terrible cover, and a rather idiotic blurb I knew it would be a fine book.
No review of Ferrante’s book is complete without a mention of how no one knows who Ferran ...more
No review of Ferrante’s book is complete without a mention of how no one knows who Ferran ...more

I have been studying Italian in my free time and so decided to try reading one of the most popular Italian writers of today: Elena Ferrante. There have been many articles about this author's mysterious anonymity. Her real identity is unknown except to her publisher because she wishes to have a normal life. I get that. Still, it only adds to the intrigue, as you can't help but wonder who writes these marvelous books. My Brilliant Friend is not the sort of book I would normally pick up as I prefer
...more

I tried. I tried. I tried. For 200 pages I tried to see what it is about this writer that gets such acclaim, but with 130 pages to go, I abandoned it - there are just too many other books in my waiting pile that I want to read.
This book was chosen for book club which is why I persisted so long (I normally stop reading a book pretty quickly if it doesn't engage me).
I didn't develop any concern for the characters, and found it really repetitive - different stage school/same response from parents ...more
This book was chosen for book club which is why I persisted so long (I normally stop reading a book pretty quickly if it doesn't engage me).
I didn't develop any concern for the characters, and found it really repetitive - different stage school/same response from parents ...more

Sep 08, 2015
Fionnuala
added it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
cop-out-review,
translated-from-italian
type, edit, delete,
undo delete,
type, edit, delete..
deep breath
start again
type, edit, delete…
make a coffee
type, edit, delete…
pour a drink
type, edit, delete..
desperation sets in
The dog ate my review!
………………................................
Why, why, why can’t I find any words to say about this book?
The problem is I don’t know what I feel about it. In fact, the book has left me without any feelings, good or bad. It has left me blank. I’m not used to feeling blank after reading.
I read Ferrante’s ...more
undo delete,
type, edit, delete..
deep breath
start again
type, edit, delete…
make a coffee
type, edit, delete…
pour a drink
type, edit, delete..
desperation sets in
………………................................
Why, why, why can’t I find any words to say about this book?
The problem is I don’t know what I feel about it. In fact, the book has left me without any feelings, good or bad. It has left me blank. I’m not used to feeling blank after reading.
I read Ferrante’s ...more

UPDATED November 2018: here’s my review of the new HBO miniseries. Hint: It’s just as good as the book!
https://nowtoronto.com/movies/reviews...
*****
My Brilliant Friend, a.k.a. My Brilliant New Obsession
Believe all the hype. This is a rich, immersive, deeply satisfying book that, like many great novels, captures a particular time and place with complete authority. I can’t wait to read the other books in the series.
In a dirt poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples in the 1950s, bright work ...more
https://nowtoronto.com/movies/reviews...
*****
My Brilliant Friend, a.k.a. My Brilliant New Obsession
Believe all the hype. This is a rich, immersive, deeply satisfying book that, like many great novels, captures a particular time and place with complete authority. I can’t wait to read the other books in the series.
In a dirt poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples in the 1950s, bright work ...more

Jan 31, 2018
Jaidee
rated it
did not like it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
under-two-stars-books
1 "sweet Jesus...this is the first of four books" stars !!
2018 Read I was Most Afraid to Hate Award
First of all a bit of translation
In English we say blahblahblah. In Italian they say blablabla.
Ms. Ferrante separates this book into two sections: Childhood (18 chapters) and Adolescence (62 chapters)
Childhood Ch 1 to 9
Ms. Ferrante writes: blablablablablablablablablab and blablablablabla
Jaidee: God I hope this gets better
Childhood Ch 10-14
Ms. Ferrante writes: blablablablabla and blablablabla ...more
2018 Read I was Most Afraid to Hate Award
First of all a bit of translation
In English we say blahblahblah. In Italian they say blablabla.
Ms. Ferrante separates this book into two sections: Childhood (18 chapters) and Adolescence (62 chapters)
Childhood Ch 1 to 9
Ms. Ferrante writes: blablablablablablablablablab and blablablablabla
Jaidee: God I hope this gets better
Childhood Ch 10-14
Ms. Ferrante writes: blablablablabla and blablablabla ...more

The entire time I spent reading this book I asked myself "What is wrong with this book? Why am I having so much trouble getting into it?". It is incredibly slow-paced, but I also believe the Italian-to-English translation must be flawed. Many of the sentences were confusing and even contradictory. The redeeming factor, and the reason I gave it two stars instead of one, was that the Italian atmosphere was strongly prevalent and somewhat enjoyable - I learned what living in Naples in the 50s mus ...more

Aug 13, 2015
Maxwell
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
translated,
owned
[4.5 stars]
If I were to describe Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend in one word it would be 'mythic.' The minutiae of Elena and Lila's lives into which Ferrante dives takes on these mythic proportions, pulling the reader along on a tense and frightful story. But at first glance, the story is anything but tense and frightful. It's a story of female friendship, between two lower-class girls in Naples following WWII. Ferrante, with precision and passion, recounts the lives of these girls as anyth ...more
If I were to describe Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend in one word it would be 'mythic.' The minutiae of Elena and Lila's lives into which Ferrante dives takes on these mythic proportions, pulling the reader along on a tense and frightful story. But at first glance, the story is anything but tense and frightful. It's a story of female friendship, between two lower-class girls in Naples following WWII. Ferrante, with precision and passion, recounts the lives of these girls as anyth ...more

This novel has so much violence that it should come with some kind of rating. Seriously, I had no idea it was so dangerous to grow up in Naples.
"I feel no nostalgia for our childhood: it was full of violence."
My Brilliant Friend is the story of two childhood friends, Elena and Lila. It is the first in a series, and I confess that when I started reading it, I did not intend to continue with them — I was just going to read this first one to see what all the fuss over Ferrante was about.
It took me ...more
"I feel no nostalgia for our childhood: it was full of violence."
My Brilliant Friend is the story of two childhood friends, Elena and Lila. It is the first in a series, and I confess that when I started reading it, I did not intend to continue with them — I was just going to read this first one to see what all the fuss over Ferrante was about.
It took me ...more

When did we all start talking about Elena Ferrante, guys? I can’t remember- was it last year? Maybe 2013? I know she’s been writing for far longer than that, but it was definitely only recently that she became A Thing. Whenever it was, we should have been talking about her sooner.
And with different words. Better words. Words whose value hasn’t been sucked out by the marketing blurbs they’ve been a part of, with the same accompanying modifiers (if I never hear “compulsively readable” again that ...more

“I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.” So said Virginia Woolf and this, the forging of identity in relationship, is very much the theme of Elena Ferrante’s compelling novel. Elena, the narrator of the novel, is in first grade when we first meet her. She lives in a violent and impoverished working class district of Naples where kindred spirits or role models are hard to find. Certainly not her mother – “My mother did her best to make me understand that
...more

A fast-paced coming-of-age novel charting the ups and downs of an intense friendship between two working-class Italian girls. Set in the ‘50s on the outskirts of Naples, the sprawling story follows author-narrator Elena and her clever best friend Lila as the two strive for greatness, wealth, and knowledge in a neighborhood beset by patriarchal feuds and gendered violence. The prose is bare, the pacing swift, the plotting episodic, the characters many and quickly sketched; with writing that feels
...more

Posted at Heradas
What you should know:
The book is fantastic, and I couldn’t help but absorb it in just a few days. I feel like it really got at the core of human insecurity, gender and income inequality, female friendships, and our hierarchy of needs. Somehow it’s also a page-turner and an engaging story. It blows my mind that all of those things are possible in one short novel. I guarantee that it’ll get under your skin and soak in.
Ferrante vs. Knausgaard:
Even though I’ve only read this first n ...more
What you should know:
The book is fantastic, and I couldn’t help but absorb it in just a few days. I feel like it really got at the core of human insecurity, gender and income inequality, female friendships, and our hierarchy of needs. Somehow it’s also a page-turner and an engaging story. It blows my mind that all of those things are possible in one short novel. I guarantee that it’ll get under your skin and soak in.
Ferrante vs. Knausgaard:
Even though I’ve only read this first n ...more

I had a friend, I still have, albeit, with time our paths diverged a bit, alas ! From early childhood till our twenties we were inseparable like two budgerigars. We were alike, yet different. We were alike because of youth but we differed about our expectations. While I daydreamed she had her feet firmly fixed on the ground. She was good at science while I always preferred humanities. She was pretty, easy-mannered girl, no wonder she was popular with the boys. But it was never any problem to me ...more

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante is the first of four novels set in Naples charting the lives of Elena Greco and her best friend Lila Curello.
The book opens, present day, as Elena, a woman in her sixties, gets a desperate call from Lila’s son Rino. His mother has disappeared, can Elena help?
She can’t, but the worrying phone call stirs up memories, and Elena eventually decides to write down the details of her relationship with her oldest friend.
We return to the 1950’s when the girls are chil ...more
The book opens, present day, as Elena, a woman in her sixties, gets a desperate call from Lila’s son Rino. His mother has disappeared, can Elena help?
She can’t, but the worrying phone call stirs up memories, and Elena eventually decides to write down the details of her relationship with her oldest friend.
We return to the 1950’s when the girls are chil ...more

My Brilliant Friend, the first in Elena Ferrante’s quartet about best friends from a Naples ghetto, is a novel about power: who holds it, how it is won and lost, and what happens when power shifts occur. It is a story of violence: domestic and cultural, physical and emotional. All this, in a novel about two young girls exploring friendship and adolescence in post-war southern Italy.
Elena Greco and Lila Cerrullo are daughters of working class families, growing up in a crowded, poor, electrifying ...more
Elena Greco and Lila Cerrullo are daughters of working class families, growing up in a crowded, poor, electrifying ...more

From the age of two until twelve, I lived in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. During the Industrial Revolution, Merthyr had briefly been the iron capital of the world, but things didn't work out; iron ore became harder to mine, the people running the refining works didn't adopt modern methods quickly enough, the town was too far from the sea. Everything fell apart, and by the 1930s unemployment was running at 80%. When I arrived with my parents in 1960, things had become a little better, but the town was
...more

Oct 06, 2014
Tatiana
marked it as dnf
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
read Atwood instead, if you are looking for books about women "friendships"
Recommended to Tatiana by:
critical acclaim
I just don't get the hype. I found the writing (or translation) incredibly choppy and the story overlong, repetitive and incoherent at times.
There must be better writers in Italy than Ferrante. ...more
There must be better writers in Italy than Ferrante. ...more

I had this book on my radar for so long but I always got distracted by other books (but I think this is the story of 90% of bookworms, so many books so little time. Sigh!) It took me three years to finally read this, and what an adventure this turn out to be.
"There was something unbearable in the things, in the people, in the buildings, in the streets that, only if you reinvented it all, as in a game, became acceptable. The essential, however, was to know how to play, and she and I, only she ...more
"There was something unbearable in the things, in the people, in the buildings, in the streets that, only if you reinvented it all, as in a game, became acceptable. The essential, however, was to know how to play, and she and I, only she ...more

Much has been said about this book, the first of the Naples trilogy, and by many.
I opened this novel with the expectation to be enthralled in a world I could relate to, with characters that would bring back echoes of my own childhood and adolescence and also hoping to be surprised by Ferrante’s unique conception of friendship.
It turns out the book did nothing of the sort. That doesn’t mean I can’t understand why some readers feel attracted to it, as I detect a sort of addictiveness in Ferrante’s ...more
I opened this novel with the expectation to be enthralled in a world I could relate to, with characters that would bring back echoes of my own childhood and adolescence and also hoping to be surprised by Ferrante’s unique conception of friendship.
It turns out the book did nothing of the sort. That doesn’t mean I can’t understand why some readers feel attracted to it, as I detect a sort of addictiveness in Ferrante’s ...more

Early in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, the narrator arrives at the eponymous farmhouse and has the following exchange with the Earnshaws' servant, Joseph:
Charming. Now imagine, for a moment, that the scene had ...more
‘What are ye for?’ he shouted. ‘T' maister's down i' t' fowld. Go round by th' end o' t' laith, if ye went to spake to him.’
‘Is there nobody inside to open the door?’ I hallooed, responsively.
‘There's nobbut t' missis; and shoo'll not oppen 't an ye mak' yer flaysome dins till neeght.’
Charming. Now imagine, for a moment, that the scene had ...more

Nov 30, 2016
Candi
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
historical-fiction,
book-i-own
"It was as if, because of an evil spell, the joy or sorrow of one required the sorrow or joy of the other; even our physical aspect, it seemed to me, shared in that swing."
Elena and Lila, a friendship born of necessity – the need to find another human soul that understands us, our longings and sorrows - someone to emulate, someone that drives each of us to become our very best self. These two girls, born into poverty in 1950s Naples, forge a relationship that is both captivating and completely ...more
Elena and Lila, a friendship born of necessity – the need to find another human soul that understands us, our longings and sorrows - someone to emulate, someone that drives each of us to become our very best self. These two girls, born into poverty in 1950s Naples, forge a relationship that is both captivating and completely ...more

A not so satisfying read for me. By many other accounts, a great book and writer. The first part of a trilogy beginning with childhood girlfriends who, come to find out, don’t get past the age of 16 in this first installment. And therein lies my problem with it. I wanted it to move into their adult years and become more interesting and relevant to me personally. I should state that I rarely enjoy reading about childhood from the child’s perspective for an entire book. For the duration, it read l
...more

What makes something a page-turner? This book is more than the sum of its (considerable) parts: Yes, the writing is great, the setting is vivid, the period sometimes shocking, the protagonist relatable and fun, the best friend one of the spunkiest, most endearing characters I've encountered, the supporting cast is varied and dizzying and each stands alone. But still: why am I gasping in shock when someone wears a particular pair of shoes. Why am I staying up late at night to finish? What happens
...more

"The women in my stories are all echoes of real women who, because of their suffering or their combativeness, have very much influenced my imagination: my mother, a childhood girlfriend, acquaintances whose stories I know. In general I combine their experiences with my own and Delia, Amalia, Olga, Leda, Nina, Elena, Lenù are born out of that mix. But the echo that you noticed maybe derives from an oscillation inside the characters that I’ve always worked on. My women are strong, educated, self-a
...more

Oh, Ms. Ferrante, hello there. No, I haven’t heard of you before. I’m so sorry. Oh, you’re an author? I like books. In fact, I even read books occasionally. I literally, like, open them and turn the pages and read the text inside them and everything. But, yeah, I haven’t heard of you.
Wait, hold on, Ms. Ferrante. Can I call you Elena? No? Sorry. Ms. Ferrante, I have never heard of you before, but this guy on a podcast recommended you and your books, something about a series of books. There was t ...more
Wait, hold on, Ms. Ferrante. Can I call you Elena? No? Sorry. Ms. Ferrante, I have never heard of you before, but this guy on a podcast recommended you and your books, something about a series of books. There was t ...more

Much has been written about My Brilliant Friend, so I'm not sure what I can add except for a few reactions to what I see as the three main characters:
< Elena -- my heart aches for you. We all know an Elena (and some of us are Elena). The brilliant second fiddle, who is too focused and intertwined with her friend Lila's life to appreciate her own talents, successes and hopes. I want to shake Elena, and to tell her to let go of Lila -- just a bit at least -- to stop hanging on Lila's every word an ...more
< Elena -- my heart aches for you. We all know an Elena (and some of us are Elena). The brilliant second fiddle, who is too focused and intertwined with her friend Lila's life to appreciate her own talents, successes and hopes. I want to shake Elena, and to tell her to let go of Lila -- just a bit at least -- to stop hanging on Lila's every word an ...more

Reading Hacks for La Dolce Vita
Goodreaders, as self-selected members of this elite club, already know about “The Good Life” with books. My purpose here is to push for more of the same but with a bit of Italian panache. The list starts generically with tips for increasing the quality and quantity of your Italian reading adventures, then turns specifically towards Elena Ferrante’s celebrated Neapolitan Novels.
1. Book in one hand, cannoli in the other.
This takes the “dolce” part of the phrase liter ...more
Goodreaders, as self-selected members of this elite club, already know about “The Good Life” with books. My purpose here is to push for more of the same but with a bit of Italian panache. The list starts generically with tips for increasing the quality and quantity of your Italian reading adventures, then turns specifically towards Elena Ferrante’s celebrated Neapolitan Novels.
1. Book in one hand, cannoli in the other.
This takes the “dolce” part of the phrase liter ...more

As my rating reflects, I was overwhelmed by this novel. The only Ferrante novel I had read before was her "Days of Abandonment," which I thought overheated (and overrated). I retract any previous negative judgment: she is a major contemporary novelist and I will now go on immediately to her second Neapolitan novel, "The Story of a New Name." This is a coming of age novel, true, but it is also much more than that. The relationship between Lila and Lenu, the latter the narrator, has a bit of the M
...more

After finishing Elena Ferrante's first novel in the Neapolitan Trilogy, I am of two minds. On the one hand, being a writer myself, it is demotivating, due to its frank brilliance; on the other, for an enthusiastic reader, it is thought-provoking and deeply engaging. And to think, this is only a translation! Though I am undeniably envious of Ferrante's beautiful skill with words, I have to acknowledge that the growing hype around her is totally warranted, and in fact, I want to add to it:-)
The st ...more
The st ...more
topics | posts | views | last activity | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Goodreads România: * Martie 2021 - "My Brilliant Friend" | 2 | 10 | 15 hours, 12 min ago | |
The Neapolitan Novels | 32 | 427 | Jan 04, 2021 11:36AM | |
Play Book Tag: My Brilliant Friend- 3 stars | 7 | 15 | Oct 17, 2020 04:21PM | |
Goodreads Librari...: Duplicate series | 2 | 29 | Jul 08, 2020 09:04AM | |
Genre Readers loo...: May 2020: My Brilliant Friend | 3 | 16 | Jun 20, 2020 05:16PM |
Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist. Ferrante's books, originally published in Italian, have been translated into many languages. Her four-book series of Neapolitan Novels are her most widely known works.
...more
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L'amica geniale
(4 books)
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“Children don’t know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night.”
—
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“At that moment I knew what the plebs were, much more clearly than when, years earlier, she had asked me. The plebs were us. The plebs were that fight for food and wine, that quarrel over who should be served first and better, that dirty floor on which the waiters clattered back and forth, those increasingly vulgar toasts. The plebs were my mother, who had drunk wine and now was leaning against my father’s shoulder, while he, serious, laughed, his mouth gaping, at the sexual allusions of the metal dealer. They were all laughing, even Lila, with the expression of one who has a role and will play it to the utmost.”
—
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