I finished reading Elena
Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend late last night and had to restrain myself from
immediately starting the second book in her Neapolitan series. There is a vivid
immediacy to Ferrante’s writing that made me feel I was IN Naples with the
characters. I would look up occasionally, disoriented, from reading, surprised
to find that I was still in my Canadian mid-winter living room and not in the
hot, dingy streets of Italy.
The book centers around Elena
and Lila, two small girls living in the same poor neighbourhood of Naples, who become
friends after Lila throws Elena’s beloved doll into the dark basement of her
apartment building. When Elena retaliates by throwing Lila’s doll, too, between
the iron bars of the basement window, their mutual shock at the fate that has
befallen their most precious belongings forms the beginning of a silent pact
between them. Elena’s words as they stare at each other in realization –
“Whatever you do, I do” – characterize the bond they will have for years to
come. Together, they attempt an (unsuccessful) rescue mission into the basement
to recover the dolls, and this marks the start of an unspoken competition, in which they push each other every day to confront a fear more awful
than the last. The determined, fiery nature of this childhood friendship
persists as they grow into teenagers, influencing them first to read more
books, get better marks at school, learn more, then to stand up to the boys and
men of their neighbourhood, and finally to manipulate their way out of the
futures expected of them. In short: the friendship between them protects them
both from the very real dangers of the world in which they exist, and becomes
the most important factor in both of their lives throughout their formative years.
The depiction of the girls
growing up, their adventures and interactions with their neighbours, provides
the reader with an intimate portrait of Naples during the 1950s. The families
we come to know are those of the fruit and vegetable seller, the carpenter, the
grocer, the shoemaker. These are the real people who make up a community, and
through them we come to understand the rules and realities that govern them. The
neighbourhood is rough and violent, but the people who live there share an
identity that manifests itself in a fierce protection of one another – by
parent of child, by brother of sister, by friend against outsider. This becomes
particularly clear on the occasions when the girls venture outside of the
neighbourhood, accompanied by the group of boys they know well from home, who
react fiercely – and en masse - to anyone who looks at the girls too directly,
who appears too forward, or whose appearance offends the nature of the
neighbourhood clans.
It is apparent from the
beginning of the novel that Lila is quite brilliant. Through Elena’s narration
we see a whippet-like girl whose stubborn will refuses to bend, who is able to
best her classmates, both male and female, in competitive tests, whose desire
to learn causes her to borrow library books in the names of everyone in her
family, who can see beyond the circumstances of her neighbourhood to understand
there is more to life, and who is able to pull almost out of thin air the circumstances
she navigates and manipulates to ensure she and her family are safe and
ultimately drawn into a better sphere of living.
But we see all of this through
the eyes of Elena, a narrator whose reliability we have some cause to question.
Lila, towards the end of the book, calls Elena her brilliant friend, and we
understand that of course she IS brilliant, perhaps the more so of the two,
that the unbalanced picture we have of Lila the Great comes to us through the
insecure, adolescent lens of a teenaged girl. We also understand that, though
Elena does not yet see this, her own form of brilliance is likely to lead to a
future far brighter than the one Lila has secured for herself by the end of the
book. And that Lila herself, her best friend, has given her, through years of
pushing her, the tools to reach for that future.
I became thoroughly attached
to these characters whilst reading and I can’t wait to continue the saga. I am,
however, imposing a break on myself, I have other books on my TBR list, and I
don’t want to swallow these up too quickly. Though I am certain I will come
back and re-read these books one day, I want to treasure each volume in the
series, like toffee to be sucked instead of bitten, in order to ensure the
pleasure endures a little longer.
What I loved:
- Ferrante writes so brilliantly, so vividly – and kudos too, to the work
of the translator, Ann Goldstein, because it reads wonderfully well in English
– and there are all kinds of meta passages in the book during which Elena
describes Lila’s writing, and then her own work to imitate that writing, to
improve her writing, that I felt could easily have been passages on Ferrante’s
own writing. I loved that this is a book about writing and books as well as
about Italian traditions and culture:
“Lila was able to speak through writing; unlike me when I
wrote, unlike Sarrator in his articles and poems, unlike even many writers I
had read and was reading, she expressed herself in sentences that were well
constructed, and without error, even though she had stopped going to school,
but – further – she left no trace of effort, you weren’t aware of the artifice
of the written word."
And later:
“Professor Gerace
and Professor Galiani, who were part of the committee, praised my Italian paper
to the skies. Gerace in particular said that my exposition was further
improved. He wanted to read a passage to the rest of the committee. And only as
I listened did I realize what I had tried to do in those months whenever I had
to write: to free myself from my artificial tones, from sentences that were too
rigid; to try for a fluid and engaging style like Lila’s in the Ischia letter.
When I heard my words in the teacher’s voice, with Professor Galiani listening
and silently nodding agreement, I realized that I had succeeded. Naturally it
wasn’t Lila’s way of writing, it was mine. And it seemed to my teachers
something truly out of the ordinary.”
- The tortuous road through female adolescence is described so perfectly
that it took me right back there. The first plump growth of breasts, the acne
blooming across the face, the first fleeting feelings of attractiveness and
then the crippling insecurity of weight fluctuations and pimples, the pain of
watching boys find another girl attractive and not you, the heart-palpitating
excitement of a first crush.
- Ferrante brilliantly conveys the sense of the neighbourhood, of how
things are done, how they have been done for eons, and then the creaking,
gradual changes that are taking place largely at the hands of Lila, and which
are so unfamiliar that even Elena, though she recognizes the change, and sees
it happening, finds it hard to grasp.
“They were behaving
in a way that wasn’t familiar even in the poems that I studied in school, in
the novels I read. I was puzzled. They weren’t reacting to the insults, even to
that truly intolerable insult that the Solaras were making. They displayed
kindness and politeness toward everyone, as if they were John and Jacqueline
Kennedy visiting a neighbourhood of indigents. When they were out walking
together, and he put an arm around her shoulders, it seemed that none of the
old rules were valid for them: they laughed, they joked, they embraced, they kissed
each other on the lips… Did she want to drag us
out of ourselves, tear off the old skin and put on a new one, suitable for what
she was inventing?”
- The character of Lila is just astonishing. I want to read more about
her. I want to know what happens to her. The beginning of the book is a teaser
for what must happen later in the series: Lila, adult Lila, has gone missing.
And Elena writes that she knows Lila well enough to know that what she wanted
most of all was to erase all trace of herself off the earth. The rest of this
book is a flashback to their early friendship. And I am left wanting to know
what happens to get her back to where we started, what happens between the
girls later in life. In other words, this series is at once detailed in its descriptions
of the minutiae of quotidian life in 1950s Naples, and sweeping in its
generational and compulsive story-telling. Quite magnificent.
