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L'amie prodigieuse: Enfance, adolescence by…
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L'amie prodigieuse: Enfance, adolescence (original 2011; edition 2016)

by Elena Ferrante (Auteur), Elsa Damien (Traduction)

Series: Neapolitan Novels (1)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
7,1363151,279 (3.88)460
Fiction. Literature. HTML:

Now an HBO series: the first volume in the New York Times bestselling "enduring masterpiece" (The Atlantic) about a lifelong friendship between two women from Naples.

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.

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… (more)
Member:Louve_de_mer
Title:L'amie prodigieuse: Enfance, adolescence
Authors:Elena Ferrante (Auteur)
Other authors:Elsa Damien (Traduction)
Info:Folio (2016), 448 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:*****
Tags:Adolescence, Amitié, Après-guerre, Enfance, Italie, Naples, Quartiers pauvres

Work Information

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (2011)

  1. 10
    Small Ceremonies by Carol Shields (aileverte)
    aileverte: Carol Shields and Elena Ferrante have similar sensibilities, write about the lives of slightly less than average women, offer insights into the writer's craft.
  2. 10
    The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien (susanbooks)
    susanbooks: Both are gorgeous novels about young girls' friendships and how they're complicated by class, family, desire.
  3. 10
    A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio (RidgewayGirl)
    RidgewayGirl: Both novels center around a girl living in a poor Italian community. Both share the same translator.
  4. 00
    Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga (rrmmff2000)
  5. 00
    The Day Before Happiness by Erri De Luca (Widsith)
    Widsith: Two books about growing up in Naples in the 1950s, with illuminating differences – Ferrante writing the start of an epic series following girls from the housing estates, De Luca a short, concise look at a boy in the historical centre… both fascinating in divergent ways.… (more)
  6. 00
    Das verborgene Wort: Roman by Ulla Hahn (Florian_Brennstoff)
  7. 00
    Die hellen Tage by Zsuzsa Bánk (Florian_Brennstoff)
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» See also 460 mentions

English (261)  Spanish (9)  Dutch (8)  Italian (8)  French (7)  German (5)  Catalan (3)  Swedish (3)  Danish (2)  Portuguese (Brazil) (1)  Finnish (1)  Arabic (1)  Hungarian (1)  Norwegian (1)  Piratical (1)  All languages (312)
Showing 1-5 of 261 (next | show all)
Should take its place alongside [b:A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man|7588|A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man|James Joyce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388201200s/7588.jpg|3298883] as an incisive account of an intellectual's growing up in a poor, religiously conservative society, and finally outgrowing it. The style however is not as similar to the self-conscious birthing of modernism of Joyce as to the totally contemporary Knausgård-ian direct and unsparing introspection into the mind; it should be no surprise that Ferrante and Knausgård are celebrated in the same current literary circles, though if Ferrante is a bit less well known than Knausgård, well, that's the price she pays for hiding from her contemporaries while he, however reluctantly, circulates as a charismatic male.

Perhaps the hideous book covers are a publisher's attempt to draw her out in outrage? It's a theory.

While Lenu is the central character, it is her friend Lila who really dominates the story for most of the book, in her presence or in her absence. Lila's intelligence and determination, her unwillingness to conform, to be something less, drive the story and Lenu. Lenu realizes she studies so hard mostly in competition with her friend, to impress Lila, and she is temporarily cut adrift and loses motivation when Lila, unable to continue her schooling (at the age of 12... 12!), appears to become defeated by family and neighborhood, to become more like the neighborhood, and Lenu cannot interest her in Greek and Italian and theology and studies anymore.

In the last pages however Lenu comes to the realization that while Lila appears trapped, she herself is driven to continue with her studies. There is no going back, she is no longer of the neighborhood in an essential sense, and one gets the sense that she will soon flee and leave it behind her as Stephen Dedalus fled Ireland.
It was during that journey to Via Orazio that I began to be made unhappy by my own alienness. I had grown up with those boys, I considered their behavior normal, their violent language was mine. But for six years now I had also been following daily a path that they were completely ignorant of and in the end I had confronted it brilliantly. With them I couldn't use any of what I learned every day, I had to suppress myself, in some way diminish myself. What I was in school I was there obliged to put aside or use treacherously, to intimidate them. I asked myself what I was doing in that car.
Lila had remained there, chained in a glaring way to that world, from which she imagined she had taken the best. And the best was that young man, that marriage, that celebration, the game of shoes for Rino and her father. Nothing that had to do with my path as a student. I felt completely alone.




( )
  lelandleslie | Feb 24, 2024 |
The first half of this novel was much stronger than the second; the almost meandering, vignette-ish chapters of the beginning were so appealing and diary-like that I totally fell into them. They were a great mix of childhood dramas and changing lives and all sorts of interesting moments. However, once a more typical plot develops I felt like the writing changed and slowed a little too much. I also begin to lowkey despise hearing about all the idiotic men running around doing idiotic things. That being said, I’ve become pretty invested in the two main characters and I definitely plan to read at least the next book in the series. ( )
  deborahee | Feb 23, 2024 |
So many other reviews - go read them. I liked it, but I didn't like it. It was interesting, but it wasn't interesting. It is well written, but it is dull. The characters are plentiful and colourful, but many are incidental and ephemeral. There are memorable scenes, but there are long stretches of nothing much. I learned what it might be like to grow up as a poor young girl in Naples, but I'm none the wiser really. I think Ferrante may have written better books, but the translator may have let her down on this one. I could say more, but I could say less. ( )
  breathslow | Jan 27, 2024 |
Dear Elena Ferrante whoever you really are. I only wish I could write like you. Betrayal. Passion. Violence. That sense of barbarity thinly disguised beneath civilization. All captured the lives and loves of children in a cramped neighbourhood of urban Naples. The aspirations of one youth pulled back into the ghetto by her inclination, and out into the greater world by her education. The ironies. Constantly looking backward and forward into the morass of regret and yearnings.

The book begins with a call from a distressed son: Elena (the narrator’s name and also the author’s) My mother has disappeared. Where is she?

Thus begins the spinning of the tale of her childhood friend, Lila, whom everyone else calls Lina, but who’s real name is Raffaela. Why does the narrator have a different name for the poor, skinny, vibrant child who cuts through the bullshit of appearances, who appears to see things before anyone else, but has disappeared in midlife, long after the actions of the novel. This is where Ferrante hurtles us forward to the next instalment of her Neapolitan tales.

Why is it that we the readers know that Raffaela is the dark genius when she herself congratulates Elena as being My Brilliant Friend, the graduate from high school with perfect grades?

I could go on peeling back the layers of this masterpiece forever. This book about books. This story about stories. ( )
  MylesKesten | Jan 23, 2024 |
I really wanted to like this, and stuck with it much longer than I ordinarily would have, hoping that at some point I would just fall into the story. It wasn't terrible, and it had moments of description or character that I enjoyed. But the story simply wasn't going anywhere, and the characters were not interesting enough to carry it along while waiting for some kind of plot to happen. DNF at 32%

Audiobook, borrowed from my public library. I don't know if it was the narrator's reading or the source material, but the audio performance contributed to my abandoning the book unfinished. Her voice just kept droning on and on, until I'd realize that my attention had wandered and I had to rewind. After almost 6 hours of listening, I just couldn't face another 12 of the same.

I was reading this for The 16 Festive Tasks square 7: International Human Rights Day: Read a book originally written in another language. I don't have another book lined up for this one. I might find a "Light Joker" to use instead. ( )
  Doodlebug34 | Jan 1, 2024 |
Showing 1-5 of 261 (next | show all)

» Add other authors (10 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Ferrante, Elenaprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Damien, ElsaTraductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Dias, Maurício SantanaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Filipetto, CeliaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Goldstein, AnnTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Gross, NinaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Hedenberg, JohannaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Hernández, MartaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Laake, Marieke vanTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Sørsdal, KristinTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
THE LORD: Therein thou’rt free, according to thy merits;

The like of thee have never moved My hate.

Of all the bold, denying Spirits,

The waggish knave least trouble doth create.

Man’s active nature, flagging, seeks too soon the level;

Unqualified repose he learns to crave;

Whence, willingly, the comrade him I gave,

Who works, excites, and must create, as Devil.--J.W. GOETHE, Faust, translation by Baynard Taylor
Dedication
Information from the French Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
/
First words
This morning Rino telephoned.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Wikipedia in English (1)

Fiction. Literature. HTML:

Now an HBO series: the first volume in the New York Times bestselling "enduring masterpiece" (The Atlantic) about a lifelong friendship between two women from Naples.

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.

.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
The story of Elena and Lila begins in a poor but vibrant neighbourhood  on the outskirts of Naples. The two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else, sometimes to their own detriment, as each discovers more about who she is and suffers or delights in the throes of their intense relationship.
Haiku summary
Volume One, of five
Her autobiography?
Childhood in Naples.
pickupsticks
Mysteries, hardships.
Fierce childhood in Naples slum
Lifelong loyalties.
pickupsticks

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