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My Brilliant Friend (My Brilliant Friend, #1)

Elena Ferrante,

Ann Goldstein (Translator)

Start date: August 15, 2015

Finish date: September 1, 2015

Discussion: Reading List

Discussion leader: Sherry

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Reading List

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What Members Thought

Jan 02, 2016 Jane rated it really liked it

Shelves: recentfiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The book really grew on me. After reading Groff's Fates and Furies with its gorgeous language and continuous unfolding of character and plot, the writing felt almost flat to me. After a while I was caught up in the unfolding of Lenu and Lila's friendship, and the choices each girl made, often in response to each other. The ending was perfect. I'm reading for a book club and can't wait to talk about it.

It's about the economic reality and inequity of Naples in the fifties... and the roles of men ...more

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Oct 12, 2016 Faezeh rated it really liked it

I really love the way Ferrante writes and she dives into the story and takes you in. But as beautiful and absorbing as the story is, Lila's character isnt very believable to me. She isnt real to me like the way everyone else is. It didnt bother me too much though for this book. ...more

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Apr 23, 2016 Rosana rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audio-books, 2016

I am going to wait until I finish the 3 books in this series and review them as a unit. I have started on the second book, The Story of a New Name, and I feel that they are too strongly linked to even think of them as separated units.

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The review for the series:

Even if we don’t admit or try to deny it, we all have a difficult relationship with mirrors. As I age, I believe I have become more disdainful of it, less preoccupied with the reflection of myself, less worried that I don’t con I am going to wait until I finish the 3 books in this series and review them as a unit. I have started on the second book, The Story of a New Name, and I feel that they are too strongly linked to even think of them as separated units.

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The review for the series:

Even if we don’t admit or try to deny it, we all have a difficult relationship with mirrors. As I age, I believe I have become more disdainful of it, less preoccupied with the reflection of myself, less worried that I don’t conform to some societal rules of beauty or femininity. Yet, if I don’t scrutinize the mirror as I once did in my teenage years – oh, those years when the mirror seemed to reflect so much of my perceived faults – these days the mirror surprises me. There are times when a fast glance shows not the person I perceive myself to be, but I get glimpses of my mother, my grandmothers, my sisters, or even my father in a nanosecond of time. A smile, a wrinkle, a stance… all remind me of others, what I have become or will become, and what I am no longer.

What if then the mirror was alive, an organic entity, that also changed as time went by? Would the mirror see in us its faults? Would the mirror idealize us or hate us?

In this series – I am writing this one single review for the 4 books as I felt them to be too interconnected to be reviewed separately – Elena Ferrante’s writing made me think of mirrors constantly. The 2 main characters lives are connected in a web of relationships, friendship, cultural and geographical background, aspirations, tragedy, envy, love and hate. They reflected each other’s lives and used such reflection as measurement of themselves, either being propelled forward by the comparison, or held back in a stated of continual resentment and hurt for what they did not achieve. We all have experienced this, I am sure. The facebook friend’s vacation that reminds us that we have not had a vacation in a long time. The high school classmate that looks so much younger, happier and richer than we do. Or the one that has been struck by personal tragedy and that reminds us that our own lives are blessed after all. All reflecting back at us, as true mirrors, our unfilled dreams, our shortcomings and, if we perceive ourselves being happy and successful, our pride and entitlement.

In the background of the main storyline, the lives of two women for more than 50 years, we learn of the neighborhood dynamics in this Naples shantytown, then of the political and cultural waves happening in Italy. We are exposed to motherhood, feminism, class warfare, family dysfunction, sexual awakening, violence, etc, etc, etc….

If I have one complain about Elena Ferrante’s writing is that it seems too long winding at times. She – whoever she may be, or he, as Elena Ferrante is an alias and although all the speculation about its true identy, we might never know – has a love for words and descriptions. We as readers can almost feel the pleasure she must have felt writing long and beautiful lines. I felt as drunk for her words as she must have felt writing them. But at times I wished that the narrator hurried on. The amount of detail seemed unnecessary and overly done. However I will forgive her, because when it was finally done, I felt sorry that she had not keep on going and lulled me along for yet longer.

I should mention that I listened to the whole series in audio and that Hilary Huber does a beautiful and nuanced reading of it.
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Aug 04, 2018 Laurel Bradshaw rated it it was ok

Shelves: women, daytimers-book-club, 1950s, italy, color-rating-yellow

I really struggled with this book, and couldn't wait to be done with it. My two stars is not necessarily an indication of the book's merit, but reflects that it is not for me. I listened to the audiobook, and while it would have been better to read it and be able to take notes so I could keep track of all the confusing characters, on the other hand I would have abandoned a print book. I finished this only because I'm a captive audience in the car, and it was for my book club, so I give those boo I really struggled with this book, and couldn't wait to be done with it. My two stars is not necessarily an indication of the book's merit, but reflects that it is not for me. I listened to the audiobook, and while it would have been better to read it and be able to take notes so I could keep track of all the confusing characters, on the other hand I would have abandoned a print book. I finished this only because I'm a captive audience in the car, and it was for my book club, so I give those books extra effort. So the main characters are Lena and Lila, but that wasn't confusing enough, so Lila is also called Lina. Then there is her brother Rino, and another boy Nino, and you get the idea. Lina, I mean Lila, is not very likeable - she's rough, aggressive, unconventional - but unquestionably brilliant. Their friendship is very passive aggressive. Lena admires Lila, and is plagued by massive insecurity and believing anything she can do, Lila can do better. But Lila is doomed by her family's poverty to cut short her education and work in the family shoe business. Nevertheless, she continues to push Lena in her studies, and confides toward the end of the book, that Lena is the brilliant one. But is it friendship or rivalry that drives this relationship? Together, the two girls navigate adolescence, male relationships, family rivalries that sometimes escalate into violence, and try and figure out how to make their dreams come true. Lena continues to pursue education as her path to becoming a successful writer, while Lila settles on marriage to a relatively well-off grocer to provide her the freedom to put her creative energies into the shoe business. There is no closure at the end of the book. The author considers the 4 volumes of this quartet to be one book, but I just don't have the interest in pursuing 3 more installments.
[Translated from the Italian Ann Goldstein.]
[Audiobook narrated by Hillary Huber.]

Book description: A modern masterpiece from one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila, who represent the story of a nation and the nature of friendship. The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. As they grow, as their paths repeatedly diverge and converge, Elena and Lila remain best friends whose respective destinies are reflected and refracted in the other. They are likewise the embodiments of a nation undergoing momentous change. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her protagonists, the unforgettable Elena and Lila. ...more

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