Elena Ferrante’s Italian language novel My Brilliant Friend strikes a strong note in the well-traveled
genre of Bildungsroman, or coming of age novels. Ferrante’s novel weaves a strong sense of place, Naples after the Second
World War, with stellar, on point character development to form a novel that is
nearly perfect in its pitch and tone.
The novel does not degenerate into a detailing of
the “exotic” other. Nor does it tumble
into the pitfalls of coming of age novels, with their mawkish sentiments and set
piece sexual scenes. No, through
Ferrante’s narrator Lelu, a bookish, hardworking girl, and her magnetic
attachment to Lila, another girl, equally smart and driven, we get a fully formed view of a
time and a place.
Ferrante has written a fearless novel about a
city and its children. Despite its universal
reach, for anyone with southern Italian ancestry, the characters and situations
will be (often disconcertingly) familiar.
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