From Powells.com
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Staff Pick
My Brilliant Friend, the first in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, is a meditation on the complexity of women's lives. Over the decades-long friendship between protagonists Lila and Lenù, we journey with them through their impoverished Naples neighborhood as each navigates a world that blurs the line between brutality and love during a time when power structures and obstacles, in place for centuries, begin to topple. This is a story about friendship, class, violence, feminism, politics, loyalty, motherhood, and, ultimately, what happens when women are denied progress. My Brilliant Friend is an incomparable reading experience written with unquestionable intelligence. Within pages, this masterpiece unfolding in your hands will have you wondering what on earth will ever compare. Ferrante is notably absent from the spotlight. She writes pseudonymously, allowing her writing to be its own voice. If this is what forgoing personal accolades looks like, let every writer henceforth take note. Recommended By D Lozano, Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
The much anticipated new novel from the author of The Days of Abandonment
#1 BEST BOOK OF THE CENTURY - NEW YORK TIMES
Now an HBO series: the first volume in the New York Times–bestselling “enduring masterpiece” about a lifelong friendship between two women from Naples (The Atlantic).
Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Elena Ferrante’s four-volume story spans almost sixty years, as its main characters, the fiery and unforgettable Lila and the bookish narrator, Elena, become women, wives, mothers, and leaders, all the while maintaining a complex and at times conflicted friendship. This first novel in the series follows Lila and Elena from their fateful meeting as ten-year-olds through their school years and adolescence.
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 two women.
Review
“The book expands as propulsively as the early universe, encompassing ideas about art and politics, class and gender, philosophy and fate, all through a dedicated focus on the conflicted, competitive friendship between Elena and Lila...uncompromising, unforgettable.”—The New York Times,
“A large, captivating, amiably peopled bildungsroman.”—James Wood, The New Yorker
“Spectacular.”—Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air
About the Author
Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), which was made into a film directed by Roberto Faenza, Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), adapted by Mario Martone, and The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008), soon to be a film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal. She is also the author of Incidental Inventions (Europa, 2019), illustrated by Andrea Ucini, Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey (Europa, 2016) and a children’s picture book illustrated by Mara Cerri, The Beach at Night (Europa, 2016). The four volumes known as the “Neapolitan quartet” (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child) were published by Europa Editions in English between 2012 and 2015. My Brilliant Friend, the HBO series directed by Saverio Costanzo, premiered in 2018.