6 reactions
My Brilliant Friend
one of the other books I was reading when I was travelling in London and recently finished was Elena Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend”. This book reads like a memoir, to the point where I’m not actually sure if it’s fiction or non-fiction, and tells the emotional tale of two friends, Elena and Lila, growing up together through strife and happiness in the more poverty-stricken areas of Naples. It was definitely a beautiful book to bring to Europe — all the lush descriptions of markets and the seaside made for great company. It delivers such emotional passages and the anger and frustration that can come with class division even within a single town. The first fifty or so pages were a bit slow, but otherwise I was hooked despite me not loving it as much as other reads and movies I saw connections to (in terms of content) such as Eugenides’s “Middlesex” and Studio Ghibli’s “Only Yesterday”. I also applaud it for its dynamic showing of innocence transforming into knowledge, maturity developing from ignorance. The twist on the title that’s revealed in the novel was, for lack of a better term, brilliant, and it also does a great job of showing the pursuit of happiness in a very harsh upbringing, and how much of that one can reduce to simple childhood ignorance. Overall I’d recommend picking this one up, despite me not knowing if I would read the next one (it was quite a heavy read, so if anything I would return to this series after a break). ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
one of the other books I was reading when I was travelling in London and recently finished was Elena Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend”. This book reads like a memoir, to the point where I’m not actually sure if it’s fiction or non-fiction, and tells the emotional tale of two friends, Elena and Lila, growing up together through strife and happiness in the more poverty-stricken areas of Naples. It was definitely a beautiful book to bring to Europe — all the lush descriptions of markets and the seaside made for great company. It delivers such emotional passages and the anger and frustration that can come with class division even within a single town. The first fifty or so pages were a bit slow, but otherwise I was hooked despite me not loving it as much as other reads and movies I saw connections to (in terms of content) such as Eugenides’s “Middlesex” and Studio Ghibli’s “Only Yesterday”. I also applaud it for its dynamic showing of innocence transforming into knowledge, maturity developing from ignorance. The twist on the title that’s revealed in the novel was, for lack of a better term, brilliant, and it also does a great job of showing the pursuit of happiness in a very harsh upbringing, and how much of that one can reduce to simple childhood ignorance. Overall I’d recommend picking this one up, despite me not knowing if I would read the next one (it was quite a heavy read, so if anything I would return to this series after a break). ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
| 42,000 mlx | |
| 75 | |
| 6 |