Elena Ferrante: My Brilliant Friend
This is the first part of Elena Ferrante's "quadrology" about the friendship between two Napolitan girls which spans multiple decades. A great, great read, and one of the best coming off age stories/ "Bildungsromane" I have read in recent years. I understand where the international hype around those books is coming from...
The story begins with the disappearance of Lila Cerullo, who has apparently realized her long-standing desire to escape from her life without leaving a trace. This event inspires her friend Elena Greco to tell "their" story, going back to the Napolitan neighborhood they both grew up in the 1950s.
Both girls come from simple backgrounds. Lila is the daughter of a shoemaker, Elena of a porter at the city hall. They start to bond when attending primary school. Even though Lila is the academically more successful, it is only Elena who gets to continue her education; Lila learns how to make shoes in her father and brother's shop. Lila gets increasingly sucked into the world of shoe-making, hoping to get rich through hand-made shoes designed by her and her brother Rino. At the same time, she keeps on studying with Elena, which, due to the ever-present rivalry between the two girls, pushes the latter to become an increasingly successful student.
The love lives of the two girls become increasingly important in the later parts of the book. Marcello Solara, whose family owns a bar-pastry shop and maintains ties to organized crime, starts to pursue Lila, much to her disliking. In order to escape from Marcello, Lila turns towards Stefano Carraci, son of the late godfather of the neighborhood, but now seemingly making a decent living in his family's grocery store. Elena, in turn, is in love with the Nino, the son of Donato Sarratore, a railroad worker, poet and womanizer. Elena is especially attracted by Nino's intellectual side and the fact that he seems to have developed beyond the confines of their neighborhood. However, apart from a kiss during a holiday, nothing happens between the two. Ever jealous of Lila and her relationship with Stefano, Elena takes Antonio Cappucio, a local mechanic, as her boyfriend. Without providing too many spoilers, the story finishes with Lila and Stefano's wedding, which turns out to run different than anticipated....
The book provides a colorful depiction of the Napolitan neighborhood the two girls grow up in, to include the various families that live in it. It also offers great insights into the social conventions of the time, with for instance Lila only being able to escape the advances of Marcello Solara by getting married to somebody else. Admittedly, I am no expert on female friendships. Still, Ferrante delivers what is probably one of the most interesting depictions of friendship- in all its complexity- I have ever read. Lila and Elena are not only best friends for each other, but also rivals, role models (especially Lila to Elena) and surrogates allowing one to live the life she herself cannot have (Elena to Lina). Nothing less than impressive.
Random movie reference:
Something from the godfather. Raising the question of whether we can ever get over our heritage..
Favorite quotes:
"The thing was happening to her that she later called dissolving margins. It was- she told me- as if, on the night of a full moon over the sea, the intense black mass of a storm advanced across the sky, swallowing every light, eroding the circumference of the moon's circle and disfiguring the shining disk, reducing it to its true nature of rough insensate material." (Elena about Lila's idea of "dissolving margins")
"I was afraid of what was happening to her, good or bad in my absence. It was an old fear, a fear that has never left me: the fear that, in losing pieces of her life, mine lost intensity and importance." (Elena about Lina not writing during her holidays)
"Out of vanity he would hurt anyone and never feel responsible. Since he is convinced that he makes everybody happy, he thinks that everything is forgiven him." (Nino about her father).
"Nino has something that's eating him inside, like Lila, and it's a gift and a suffering; they aren't content, they never give in, they fear what is happening around them." (Elena about Nino)
"The beauty of mind that Cerullo had from childhood didn't find an outlet, Greco, and it has all ended up in her face, in her breasts, in her thighs, in her ass, places where it soon fades and it will be as if she had never had it." (Their former teacher about Lila)
"But now I felt good and I wanted to feel even better. When Antonio, guessing that I was in the right mood, asked if I wanted to be his girlfriend, I said yes right away, even though I loved someone else, even if I felt for him nothing but some friendliness." (Elena about her boyfriend Antonio)
"It had been very energizing to win praise from those who seemed to me better ... taking sides against those who seemed to me worse ... and yet to behave toward the adversaries in such a way as not to lose their friendship and respect." (Elena)
"I thought how contradictory she was, without realizing it, with her rages, with those imperious gestures. She hadn't wanted me to go to school, but now that I was going to school she considered me better than the boys I had grown up with, and she understood, as I myself did, that my place was not among them." (Elena about Lina)
"Yes, you're right, I don't know what I am and what I really want, I use you and then I throw you away, but it's not my fault, I feel half and half, forgive me." (Elena about her feelings towards Antonio)
This is the first part of Elena Ferrante's "quadrology" about the friendship between two Napolitan girls which spans multiple decades. A great, great read, and one of the best coming off age stories/ "Bildungsromane" I have read in recent years. I understand where the international hype around those books is coming from...
The story begins with the disappearance of Lila Cerullo, who has apparently realized her long-standing desire to escape from her life without leaving a trace. This event inspires her friend Elena Greco to tell "their" story, going back to the Napolitan neighborhood they both grew up in the 1950s.
Both girls come from simple backgrounds. Lila is the daughter of a shoemaker, Elena of a porter at the city hall. They start to bond when attending primary school. Even though Lila is the academically more successful, it is only Elena who gets to continue her education; Lila learns how to make shoes in her father and brother's shop. Lila gets increasingly sucked into the world of shoe-making, hoping to get rich through hand-made shoes designed by her and her brother Rino. At the same time, she keeps on studying with Elena, which, due to the ever-present rivalry between the two girls, pushes the latter to become an increasingly successful student.
The love lives of the two girls become increasingly important in the later parts of the book. Marcello Solara, whose family owns a bar-pastry shop and maintains ties to organized crime, starts to pursue Lila, much to her disliking. In order to escape from Marcello, Lila turns towards Stefano Carraci, son of the late godfather of the neighborhood, but now seemingly making a decent living in his family's grocery store. Elena, in turn, is in love with the Nino, the son of Donato Sarratore, a railroad worker, poet and womanizer. Elena is especially attracted by Nino's intellectual side and the fact that he seems to have developed beyond the confines of their neighborhood. However, apart from a kiss during a holiday, nothing happens between the two. Ever jealous of Lila and her relationship with Stefano, Elena takes Antonio Cappucio, a local mechanic, as her boyfriend. Without providing too many spoilers, the story finishes with Lila and Stefano's wedding, which turns out to run different than anticipated....
The book provides a colorful depiction of the Napolitan neighborhood the two girls grow up in, to include the various families that live in it. It also offers great insights into the social conventions of the time, with for instance Lila only being able to escape the advances of Marcello Solara by getting married to somebody else. Admittedly, I am no expert on female friendships. Still, Ferrante delivers what is probably one of the most interesting depictions of friendship- in all its complexity- I have ever read. Lila and Elena are not only best friends for each other, but also rivals, role models (especially Lila to Elena) and surrogates allowing one to live the life she herself cannot have (Elena to Lina). Nothing less than impressive.
Random movie reference:
Something from the godfather. Raising the question of whether we can ever get over our heritage..
Favorite quotes:
"The thing was happening to her that she later called dissolving margins. It was- she told me- as if, on the night of a full moon over the sea, the intense black mass of a storm advanced across the sky, swallowing every light, eroding the circumference of the moon's circle and disfiguring the shining disk, reducing it to its true nature of rough insensate material." (Elena about Lila's idea of "dissolving margins")
"I was afraid of what was happening to her, good or bad in my absence. It was an old fear, a fear that has never left me: the fear that, in losing pieces of her life, mine lost intensity and importance." (Elena about Lina not writing during her holidays)
"Out of vanity he would hurt anyone and never feel responsible. Since he is convinced that he makes everybody happy, he thinks that everything is forgiven him." (Nino about her father).
"Nino has something that's eating him inside, like Lila, and it's a gift and a suffering; they aren't content, they never give in, they fear what is happening around them." (Elena about Nino)
"The beauty of mind that Cerullo had from childhood didn't find an outlet, Greco, and it has all ended up in her face, in her breasts, in her thighs, in her ass, places where it soon fades and it will be as if she had never had it." (Their former teacher about Lila)
"But now I felt good and I wanted to feel even better. When Antonio, guessing that I was in the right mood, asked if I wanted to be his girlfriend, I said yes right away, even though I loved someone else, even if I felt for him nothing but some friendliness." (Elena about her boyfriend Antonio)
"It had been very energizing to win praise from those who seemed to me better ... taking sides against those who seemed to me worse ... and yet to behave toward the adversaries in such a way as not to lose their friendship and respect." (Elena)
"I thought how contradictory she was, without realizing it, with her rages, with those imperious gestures. She hadn't wanted me to go to school, but now that I was going to school she considered me better than the boys I had grown up with, and she understood, as I myself did, that my place was not among them." (Elena about Lina)
"Yes, you're right, I don't know what I am and what I really want, I use you and then I throw you away, but it's not my fault, I feel half and half, forgive me." (Elena about her feelings towards Antonio)
