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Loading... L'amie prodigieuse: Enfance, adolescence (original 2011; edition 2016)by Elena Ferrante (Auteur), Elsa Damien (Traduction)
Work InformationMy Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (2011)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. 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. 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. 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. 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. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
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.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)853.92Literature Italian Italian fiction 1900- 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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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.
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