I recently completed the novel My Brilliant Friend, by reclusive novelist Elena Ferrante, and just wished to share some of my thoughts on it before I lose them. Primarily, I found the book to be rather well written, however her prose at times was a tad bit bland, and even discouraged reading occasionally. Besides this fact, however, she had her moments of great language such as her metaphors, and use of irony. The whole subject of the book for me felt in question until around the middle. Around this point, it occurred to me that the main charecter is not Lila, or Lenu, but their friendship itself. The friendship is the only thing that throughout the novel, serves as a replacement for the absent hero. As for the villain, that role most definitely is placed on another obscurity, the violence of the neighborhood itself. The novel is dense with metaphors of escape, from Lila making shoes to carry her to financial security and the freedom from violence, to Lenu temporarily relocating to Ischia for a trip that momentarily erases her cares of violence and misdoings. Therefore despite the heavy backlash I have seen against the novel, I don’t see it as badly as I expected myself to. Of course it’s not as good as the Brothers Karamazov, or One Hundred Years of Solitude, but it does serve as a excellent portrait of the intimacies of friendship, captured vividly against a backdrop of tumult, and violence.
by Significant_Try_6067